“The main source or reference on which King Chulalongkorn [of Siam/Thailand in 1904] relied in his research on Mahāyāna was a book about the history of Japanese Buddhism by a ‘Japanese priest’ translated into English” (p. 420). This rather remarkable statement in Arthid Sheravanichkul's excellent chapter in How Theravāda is Theravāda? Exploring Buddhist Identities encapsulates the complicated nature of trying to define particular Buddhist traditions, and it shows the difficulty the editors of this book (Peter Skilling, Jason Carbine, Claudio Cicuzza, and Santi Pakdeekham) faced in the first published attempt to trace the history of the term “Theravāda” and institutions, texts, teachers, and rituals associated with it. The product of their efforts is a monumental achievement. Let me state at the outset that this book, which no short review could do justice to, is one of the most important books in the field of Buddhist studies in the last fifty years. It should immediately become the foundational text on every graduate student's general/comprehensive exam in Buddhist studies and will be debated by scholars and students for many years.

I first heard Skilling give a talk in Singapore in 2004 establishing the basic ideas that would later turn into this book. The conference in Singapore was organized by Jason Carbine and Guillaume Rosenberg. The former worked with Skilling to organize a panel at another conference in Atlanta in 2008. Cicuzza and Pakdeekham, two of the most talented scholars of Southeast Asian Buddhism, were brought on to guide this massive tome to fruition. They were ambitious. This book is not for beginning students or those looking for an easy introduction to Theravāda Buddhism. They do not answer the question that is the title of the book. There is no clear definition of Theravāda as a term or an institution. Indeed, as Skilling states in his introduction, the Theravāda is not centralized, but its adherents formed a “network of modules, self-governing and self-reproducing units” (p. xiv), which often depended on political and material support from a wide variety of political and social institutions in a wide variety of ethnic and linguistic contexts.

In their efforts to provide a resource for upper-level students and scholars, they have been given ample room. Because the editors decided to publish their book with Silkworm instead of a major university press in Europe, Japan, or North America, they have sacrificed a book that is widely distributed and widely accessible for one that provides a great service to the serious reader. Each contributor was given a large number of color plates, liberal use of footnotes and bibliographic references, and room to write. Most publishers would not accept a 600-plus-page volume with such long chapters (e.g., Todd Perreira's piece comes to 128 pages). The contributions of Rupert Gethin (66 pages on the use of the term “Theravāda” in the Pali canon and commentaries with a special focus on the works of Buddhaghosa) and Lance Cousins (an impressive 61-page history of the Abayagiri “school” of Buddhism in Sri Lanka) alone are worth the price of the book (which is actually quite inexpensive) and could have actually formed a volume on their own since they both focus on primarily Pali sources produced in India and Sri Lanka and discuss the early formations (pre-fourteenth century CE) of what later came to be called the Theravāda. These are counterbalanced with Max Deeg's eye-opening study of the instances of Sthavira, Thera, and Sthaviravāda in Chinese Buddhist sources. Perreira's focus on the intellectual history of the Western use of the term “Theravāda” could be a single, and very useful, monograph, and should be one of the first articles students read for embarking on graduate work in the field.

In sum, this book's greatest strength—detailed studies written for a serious audience—is perhaps its greatest weakness. It is not a light read. The editors did not force the individual contributors to discipline themselves. They were given license to fully explain their points, use ample examples, provide original quotations from primary and secondary courses, and include foreign (Pali, Thai, Burmese, Khmer, and Sanskrit) terms and passages. A glossary and brief introductions to each chapter (or even abstracts) might have made the text more user-friendly. Moreover, the context of the book's origin and gestation are not given until halfway through the introduction. A simple preface that laid out the context of the volume and the general state of the field might have been helpful before the more complex introduction. Furthermore, the inclusion, despite the fact that the book is already quite long, of a contribution by an anthropologist or specialist in modern Buddhist practice in South or Southeast Asia might have helped to show how practitioners of Theravāda Buddhism in the region today think about and use (or do not use) the term “Theravāda.” Another chapter on the other forms of Buddhism practiced in the region alongside Theravāda today would also have been useful. Skilling himself acknowledges this lack of work on the post-1930s period, but it is hard to criticize the editors since the book is already so substantial.

In a short review, I cannot discuss each contribution, but let me draw out a few important themes. First, most of the contributors pay a great deal of attention to vernacular sources. Nearly all of the contributors, especially Sheravanichkul, Olivier de Bernon, and Skilling, look at the interplay of Pali and vernacular sources. Moreover, they look beyond scriptural sources and employ letters, political documents, secondary sources, and inscriptions in local vernacular languages (Burmese, Khmer, etc.). For example, De Bernon shows how a close focus on a single Khmer inscription, “one textual moment” (p. 371) as he states, reveals the complicated layers of intertextual play between Pali, Sanskrit, Thai, and Khmer in the region. Second, most of the contributors show the importance of material culture in the study of premodern Theravāda Buddhism, a field that has long been characterized by primarily textual approaches. Handlin's look at narrative murals in Pagan (Burma) is a perfect example of the ways in which art historians contribute to Buddhist studies. For example, she shows how “temples' décor” was where local Pali “textual adaptabilities” were often witnessed (p. 195).

Finally, this collection offers the reader a balance between broad studies that make connections across countries and detailed studies of particular places and time periods. Probably the best example of a contribution that makes broad connections is Anne Blackburn's study of the conversations between Siamese and Sri Lankan Buddhist intellectuals in the eighteenth century. Blackburn's work should be required reading for all students who find themselves studying Theravāda in particular national contexts to ensure that they think more broadly. It shows that religious traditions are always formed in dialogue and that self-designations are formulated when ecclesiastical, intellectual, and political leaders are confronted with what they call their own tradition articulated by a foreign other. Phra Sugandha (Anil Sakya), a Nepali who has been a monk in Thailand for thirty years, offers another example of border-crossing scholarship. He looks closely at the invention of the Ariyaka script by King Mongkut (Rama IV) in Bangkok in the mid-nineteenth century. This was the first attempt to create a universal Pali script in which Sri Lankan, Khmer, Burmese, Lao, and Siamese monks could communicate. While many scholars talk about the Theravāda as an entity in the abstract, Blackburn and Sakya show how practicing Buddhists in the premodern period were establishing it through distinct administrative, ritual, material, and textual acts.

While these studies that show connections across language and ethnic communities are important, readers should also pay attention to the erudite studies of individual texts, as seen in Cicuzza's and Carbine's contributions. Carbine's contribution here is his long-awaited study of the Sīmāsammuti and Sāsanasuddhi, which looks at the ways in which Buddhism as an institutional, ritual, and epistemological thing is actually established in a particular place. The most important activity of a local sangha is, of course, the act of self-replication. Carbine puts this act into historical and social context. Cicuzza also looks at ordination of new monks by focusing on the Paramatthamaṅgala in both Pali and Thai, which provides one of the only studies of an ānisaṃsa (Thai: anisong) text.

Skilling's introduction and chapter on Wat Pho is the place where the question over how to characterize “Theravāda” is most clearly seen. Skilling's own contribution is exemplary for showing the ways in which art and architecture can be sources of political and doctrinal developments in the history of the tradition. He studies the changes that took place at the library of Wat Rakhang and the monastery of Wat Phra Chetuphon (Wat Pho) in Bangkok/Thonburi. He offers what I like to call the “biography of a building” and shows how a very close study of one built environment, Wat Pho, can reveal much larger trends in the history of a religion. He also takes up the challenge of defining the Theravāda, in a sense, by not defining it. Until this book, the most significant publication that looked at the Theravāda as a historical, intellectual, and cultural phenomena was Steven Collins's Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities, the book that I and many other scholars consider the watershed moment for scholarship in the field.Footnote ¹⁶ For the first time, Collins's book is offered a serious rebuttal. Collins used the term “Pali Imaginaire” as a way of thinking about the Theravāda comprehensively in the premodern period as a “relatively stable mental universe in a changing material-historical world” (p 336). Skilling, in a footnote on page 298 and in a sustained mini-essay from pages 336 to 347, challenges Collins. I cannot do justice to the rebuttal here. Skilling offers his critique in the spirit of generating dialogue for which Collins has been waiting fifteen years. Collins wrote his book looking to generate controversy and conversation, and it is about time a scholar of Skilling's pedigree has taken up Collins's invitation. For any scholar or student in the field, this is one of the most important 15 pages written in a generation.

It is difficult for me to contain my enthusiasm for this book. I hope that it will be the volume that launches many other reflections on the Theravāda, a term which, because of these scholars' work, should now be whispered in hesitation.