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Identified as a “Buddhist High Priest” and shown holding an open book, the caption and image both suggest a highly learned Sinhalese monk. Although anonymous, we can identify him as one of the pioneers of the Buddhist revivalist movement in the 19th century, Hikkaduwe Sumangala.

Sumangala was the head priest of Adam’s Peak, a position of great prestige, and a friend to many Western Orientalist scholars Theosophists Henry Steel Olcott and Helena Blavatsky considered Sumangala, “the most learned of all the representatives of his faith.”

The photograph was taken in the 1890s by the first private studio to sell postcards in Sri Lanka, A. W. Plâté & Co. The previous owner of the card used it to take travel notes, detailing the “bright yellow” color of monks’ robes and their frequent use of palm leaf fans and umbrellas.

Considered an esteemed scholar of Buddhism, Sumangala formally certified the accuracy of Olcott’s Buddhist Catechism in 1881, a book that presented Buddhism as both scientific and rational, as opposed to “religious.”

Sumangala pushed back against Olcott’s reading of a persisting soul, however, which was removed from his book. For more on the interaction of Sumangala and Olcott, see Julie Chajes, “Orientalist Aggregates: Theosophical Buddhism Between Innovation and Tradition” (2021).

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