Alicia Turner - The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire

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Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox and Brian Bocking 2020

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ISBN 9780190073084

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This book is dedicated with love to our partners, who have patiently tolerated our obsession with Dhammaloka for many years, as well as helping with this project in ways too numerous to be counted:

Michelle

rfhlaith

Shelagh

Like Dhammalokas own projects, this book was made possible by the support and collaboration of many academic researchers, independent scholars, Buddhists, librarians, friends, and family around the world, who enabled us to track him through many different countries, languages, disciplines, and perspectives.

In particular we would like to record our thanks to those colleagues who have been a close part of this network of Dhammaloka Studies specialists over the years:

Thomas Borchert

Phibul Choompolpaisal

Kate Crosby

Tadhg Foley

Maria Griffin

Jasmine Jasani

Rachel Pisani

Mihirini Sirisena

Andrew Skilton

Thomas Tweed

Shinichi Yoshinaga.

We want to thank the many other people who have supported this project in many different ways over the years and without whom we would have been unable to complete this project:

Akshobin, Aung Soe Min, Jyoti Atwal, Tim Barrett, Stephan Bean, Sangeeta Besoya, Robert Bickers, Anne Blackburn, Sarah Blake, Bo Bo Lasin, Marion Bowman, Bnedicte Brac de la Perrire, Erik Braun, Colm Breathnach, John Breen, Ian Brown, Chang Qing, Tim Colton, Chris Connolly, Michael Cooke, Marian Cotter, David Cox, Richard Cox, Wendy Cox, John Crow, Erik Davis, Mahinda Deegalle, Marc Demarest, Lucia Dolce, Wendy Doniger, Philip Douglas, the Duggan family, Terry Dunne, Yulia Egorova, Audrey Elliott, Gilles de Flogny, David Fahey, Richard Fardon, Caroline Fennell, Alicia Filipowich, Fiona Fitzsimons, Keith Flett, Bernie Gardiner, Richard Gombrich, Jan Graham-Clark, Charles Guard, Naoko Gunji, Lydia Guzy, Anna Halahoff, Elizabeth Harris, Helen Doxford Harris, Paul Harrison, Simone Heidegger, Ian Herbertson, Adrian Hermann, Michael Holland , Cheryl Hoskin, Chad Hubert, Michael Hutt, Vivian Ibrahim, Mami Iwata, Richard Jaffe, Vicky Janssen, Michael Jenkins, Joyce Jenkins, Bob Jones, Shane Kilcommins, James Kapalo, Steven Kemper, James Ketelaar, Mathew Kidwell, Hwansoo Kim, Audrey Kinch, Alexey Kirichenko, Orion Klautau, Hilary Lawson, Ian Lawton, Ken Lennan, Clement Liang, Amarjiva Lochan, Johnsen Low, Toms MacSheoin, Maung Maung Thein, John May, Anna Mazzoldi, Barbara McCormack, Sharman Minus, David Wynne Morgan, Hiram Morgan, Loreley Morling, Steve Mullins, John L. Murphy, Alf Nilsen, Nyanatusita, Douglas Ober, Eunan OHalpin, Emma Okada, Yoshiko Okamoto, Seamus OTuama, Chris Powell, Timothy Pwee, Michael Pye, Pyi Phyo Kyaw, Ted Rausch, Andrew Rawlinson, Michael Roberts, Oliver Scharbrodt, Gaynor Sekimori, Yafa Shanneik, Jill Shaw, Christopher Shepard, Laurence Singlehurst, Sue Spelling, Irene Lin Stanford, Emma Sweeney, Francois Tainturier, Francesca Tarocco, Alan Taylor, Rosemary Taylor, Stefania Travagnin, Katja Triplett, Eleonore Tuohy, Joe Tuohy, Geoffrey Turner, David Twomey, John Twomey, Galia Umansky, Les Valentine, Jean van Sinderen-Law, Ven. Veera Vingvorn, Jane Clarke Wadsworth, Wai Phyo Maung, Youxuan Wang, Judy Webster, Paul Whitaker, Jo Wildy, and archivists and librarians at institutions on four continents for their amazing patience and generosity.

Our thanks go to the organizers, staff, and student helpers and all participants of Dhammaloka Day (2011) and the South-East Asia as a Crossroads for Buddhist Exchange conference (2012), both at University College Cork; the Bordering the Borderless conference (2013) at Duke University; and the Asian Buddhism: Plural Colonialisms and Plural Modernities conference (2014) in Kyoto, who helped us tease out the ideas in this book.

We also want to thank our colleagues and staff of the Department of Humanities, York University; the Department of Sociology and the Library, Maynooth University; and the Study of Religions Department, University College Cork.

Our special thanks go to Cynthia Read and Hannah Campeanu at Oxford University Press, to Tharani Ramachandran and her team at Newgen, and to Eric Rayman of Miller Korzenik Sommers Rayman.

Funding for the research in this book has included an Irish Research Council Advanced Collaborative Research Project Grant; a Canadian SSHRC Insight Development Grant; a Dhammakaya International Society of the UK grant; a Robert H. N. Ho Foundation/ACLS Fellowship; an IAHR/AAR Collaborative Research Grant; and conference and research support from University College Cork, Maynooth University, and York University, Toronto.

Our sincere apologies to anyone weve forgotten!

The figure in black was the Chief Court Judge, the Honourable Daniel Harold Ryan Twomey, forty-six years old, a native of Carrigtwohill, County Cork, and by 1911 one of Burmas best-known judges, with a reputation for severity.

Looking up at Twomey from the dock was the Irish Buddhist U Dhammaloka, whose original nameas far as the court knewwas William Colvin (shown in ) and his learned colleague, Mr. Harvey.

Whether either Twomey or Dhammaloka was in the least impressed by the others ritual garb is doubtful. Twomey was used to having Buddhist monks before him in court, whether for family property disputes or criminal charges, while Dhammaloka, as a temperance campaigner and Buddhist renunciant, probably regarded himself not only as Twomeys moral superior but also as a fellow upholder of the law, having brought to justice corrupt officials who might otherwise have escaped the courts. According to a correspondent in Calcutta who had known him since 1903,

Dhammaloka was, indeed, a terror to evil-doers, and many have been the sensational exposures that he has been instrumental in effecting.... He took a keen pride in his work, and often would walk the streets in the dead of night or in the early morning in order to obtain some particular information which would enable him to bring some wrong-doer to task.... During a visit paid by Dhammaloka, while in Singapore, the writer casually mentioned that a