Rebirth of a nation or 'The incomparable toothbrush': the origin story and narrative regeneration in Sri Lanka

I examine the post-Independence role of Sri Lanka’s origin story, revealing the ways in which the foundational myth of the Mahavamsa functions as a conflicted site of cultural ‘encompassment’ (Kapferer) in literary and political discourse. Through an analysis of the fiction of Tissa Abeysekara, Carl Muller and the assassinated president Ranasinghe Premadasa, I show how the scripting of this myth in fiction reveals a shift from the celebratory drives of nationalism to a critique of patriotism in a way that both reflects and anticipates a broader paradigmatic shift in the construction of belonging and the outsider found in post-war Sri Lanka

Translation: The relative native

Translation by Julia Sauma and Martin Holbraad of: Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2002) "O Nativo Relativo." Mana, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 113-14

Imagining karma: ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek rebirth

With Imagining Karma, Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. Obeyesekere's comprehensive inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. The author brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides

صورة ورؤيا زاهد من سري لانكا / Portrait and Vision of A Sri Lankan Saint

[The translation covers the last chapter of Gananth Obeyeskere\u27s Medusa\u27a Hair, entitled Epilogue: The End and the Beginning. The research that went into this essay stemmed form an incident at Kataragama in 1973 whence Obeyesekere was awed by the view of an ecstatic woman worshipper at the shrine, with matted hair, which recalled medusa, and in turn Freud\u27s essay Medusa\u27s Head . In his epilogue, Obeyesekere goes on to recollect an incident which occured to him at Kataragama in 1979, six years after he had seen the fire-walking Medusa, when he saw what he believed to be a Sri Lankan Sinhala saint, a hair. Obeyesekere presents a biographical sketch of this man, Sada Sami: He was born in Galle in 1909 and his father died five years later. He was raised by his mother and his older brother. He left his home town for Tammuttegama after a violent encounter with his sister, and there he was hired as a shop assistant. Extensive reading made him quite religious and, consequently, he grew sick of his job, and commenced his own business twenty years later - an endeavor which he ultimately abandoned as well. In 1951 Sami acquired the gift of matted hair as a result of an anonymous person pouring water on his head in a dream and a subsequent fever that ailed him. Years later, he was instructed to conquer Mahasona (the strongest of demons), which he shrewdly did, and, as such, was no longer obliged to offer dola to the gods. His fame became wide spread (the working of the gods) and he went to Matara where he practiced rituals for healing the ill. His main objective, however, was to reach nirvana. In commenting on these experiences, Obeyesekere states that these dreams are recognized as dreams per se by Sada Sami, but indeed dreams, for Sami, are merely a reality which prevails in a different dimension. Sami has, as Obeyesekere contends, constructed images which correspond to his culture and its symbols. The author labels Sami\u27s dreams as myth dreams. He further hypothesizes that Sami\u27s case suggests that myths may have originated in the hypnomantic consciousness. He concludes that the myth conditions the dream as the dream conditions the myth. Obeyesekere then provides his readers which some interpretations of the symbols which appear in Sada Sami\u27s dreams, and their relation to his culture.