Alexander McKinley
Mountain at a Center of the World: Pilgrimage and Pluralism in Sri Lanka
New York: Columbia University Press, 2024. 331 pages. Hardcover, $140.00; paperback, $35.00; ebook, $34.99. ISBN 9780231210614 (hardcover), 9780231210607 (paperback), 9780231558501 (ebook).
In this book, Alexander McKinley aims at undertaking the extensive and difficult task of writing the biography of a mountain. However, this is not just some mountain but the most important one in Sri Lankan religious history and present: Adam’s Peak. Also called Sri Pada (Sacred Footprint) or Samanala Kanda (Butterfly Mountain), its names illustratively show its embeddedness in the multireligious history and mythmaking processes of Sri Lanka. Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists respectively argue that either Adam’s, Shiva’s, or the Buddha’s footprints mark the peak of the mountain. A study of this mountain can, therefore, enhance the study of religion in two important areas: the study of pilgrimage and the study of religious pluralism—both from the perspective of the Global South. And it is both these tasks that the author embarks upon in his work.
To do so, he uses an innovative approach to the topic and aims at writing a biography of the mountain. Through this perspective, he can approach a diverse range of contemporary questions, methods, and theories in the study of religion, such as religion and environment/ecology, material religion, spatiality, mythmaking, and the coming together of human and nonhuman agents and their agency. As such, this study provides novel scholarship on this topic. Not only is this the first book-length study of the mountain, and therefore valuable in its rich source material that ranges from written historical texts to ethnographic fieldwork, but it is also a much-needed study of the place from the perspective of multireligiosity in its competing political power structures in past and present-day Sri Lanka.
The book’s main achievements are the sorting of myths, stories, histories, and experiences (all of these exceeding the boundaries of text, languages, and religions) into a compelling and capturing read. Its chapters are sorted into different ways one can encounter the mountain. In part 1, the author focusses on its network-like relationship with its people, of which not all have a religious relationship with the space; for some it is a place of work and trade, and for others it was a place to live and gain water from. Part 2 deals with the different intersecting and diverging myths of the mountain. While usually histories and scholarly works on this site have either focused on one religious tradition or placed the different religious traditions and myths next to one another, McKinley convincingly shows that these myths and stories have not only influenced one another but are mutually constitutive and dependent on one another. Lastly, part 3 engages more closely with pilgrimages as a religious praxis and meaning-making process. Again, the author examines this from the perspective of the mountain. These three parts, which sometimes seem to offer contradicting perspectives, enable a new analysis of (religious) pluralism.
Notably, this new cartography of pluralism opens up the possibility for understanding religious pluralism from a non-Eurocentric point of view, which would presuppose religions as clear-cut entities and religion as a separate sphere in society. The perspective from the mountain where all those different stories, myths, and experiences intersect allows the author to write a story of pluralism that is not bound to these recurring problems in the study of religion.
While the book’s aims are set high, it does not reach its full potential. I argue that this is due to some general theoretical and more specific Sri Lankan contextual issues. Even though the author uses an astoundingly wide range of sources in different languages that are based in different religious contexts, such as Tamil, Sinhala, Pali, and translations of Arabic texts, there is a distinct focus on the Sinhala Buddhist perspectives. Although the author is aware and explicitly writes about the existing Sinhala Buddhist hegemonic (religious) politics in Sri Lanka and its impact on the perception of history, and although he aims at using Pali sources to counter this specific contemporary Sinhala Buddhist view, the snake is biting its own tail here. Because of the author’s ethnographic fieldwork, his views on ontologies of time and conceptions of spatiality are heavily influenced by the people he encounters—who are mostly Buddhists (though not all Sri Lankan). Therefore, there is distinct difference between the textual and the ethnographic religious perspectives of the mountain, which have a visible impact on McKinley’s theorization of pilgrimage, pluralism, and religious ecology. Notably, I would argue that the author’s use of “ecology” is a result of present-day politics at that site that would better be understood in terms of “spatiality” and “geography.” That this does not happen is due to the fact that he does not engage with contemporary theoretical work on spatiality and new materialism now with specific religious studies scholarship in this realm. Most of the references are made to Bruno Latour and Mircea Eliade, who both have their distinct problems when it comes to Eurocentrism and exoticization—both of which McKinley aimed at challenging with this work.
However, this book is an exciting and compelling read that is very well written and will, therefore, catch the interest of many diverse readers in the study of religion and/or South Asia. Even though a lot of prior knowledge is needed when it comes to the history of South Asian and Sri Lankan religions, as well as Sri Lankan history more broadly, this book bears many interesting lines of thought and study for a diverse audience. Whether it be pilgrimage, religious pluralism, Sri Lankan history, or the spatial turn, anyone interested in one or more of these fields will gain many insights from this work.
Jessica A. Albrecht
FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg