our times are characterized by the sheer intensity and spread of bhakti religion; and while it starts among the urban poor, it gets accepted by others as a reaction to the fundamentalism and the puritan ethics of Protestant Buddhism.
An analysis of the parallel threads of modern Sri Lankan Buddhism: the “rational,” European-inflected forms of the educated, upper classes and the Hindu-inflected “devotional” forms of the masses.
While much has continued to change in Sri Lanka in the decades since their field work, the book remains a solid introduction to the modern history of Buddhism in Ceylon.