Religious World of Kiirti Srii: Buddhism, Art, and Politics in Late Medieval Sri Lanka

In this interdisciplinary inquiry, John Clifford Holt seeks to uncover how Buddhism was understood and expressed in Sri Lanka, Asia's oldest continuing Buddhist culture, during the advent of European colonialism. Holt focuses on King Kirti Sri Rajasinha, who ruled in the waning years of indigenous Sri Lankan rule, and how he successfully revived Sinhalese Theravada Buddhism despite persistent Dutch colonial threats and a deeply suspicious Kandyan Buddhist Sinhalese aristocracy.