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Buddhist scholar pens English translation of 13th century literary text

New book is informative read for anyone interested in Buddhism, author says

SPRINGFIELD —Scholars will tell you that it’s often painstaking to translate text from one language to another. But it’s even more perplexing when the original text is written in an ancient language. Just ask Dr. Stephen Berkwitz, associate professor of religious studies at Missouri State University. His recently published book, “The History of the Buddha’s Relic Shrine: A Translation of the Sinhala Thupavasma,” is a 300-page translation from a 13^th century Sri Lankan text.

“With the guidance of a professor of linguistics in Sri Lanka, I went page by page, translating every single word,” Berkwitz says. “It took about a year and a half to translate, and it’s a very laborious process because there is no Sinhala/English dictionary available for this ancient form.”

The text Berkwitz translated is unique, he says, because it is both literary and historical. “It is composed in a very stylistic fashion with a lot of poetic descriptions as well as elaborate similes and imagery.”

The “Sinhala Thupavasma” was originally composed by Parakama Pandita in the 13^th century and is an important example of a Buddhist chronicle, the author says. It is among works that inform public discussion and debate over the place of Buddhism in the Sri Lankan nation state and the role of Buddhist monks in contemporary politics.

The primary focus of Berkwitz’s book, published by Oxford University Press, centers on the description of how a Sri Lankan relic shrine – Thupa – was built in the second century B.C. to enshrine parts of the Buddha’s bodily relics (believed to be a bushel of his cremated bones).

The book also contains a descriptive account of how Buddhism spread outside of India.

“This version is written explicitly for a wide audience,” Berkwitz says. “It tells us something important about how Buddhism was understood and practiced at a popular level.”

Berkwitz has been studying Buddhism for more than a decade. In 2005-06, he received a Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar Award, which allowed him to travel to Sri Lanka for seven months to conduct research on early colonial-era Buddhist poetry – particularly literature written in the Sinhala language – and to lecture at the University of Colombo regarding the status of Buddhism in the United States.