Colonel Henry Olcott and the Buddhist Kingdom of Lion

Olcott’s eight-month journey throughout the colonial provinces exposed him to British dominance over native people and led him to reject the generally accepted claims of Western superiority, colonial benevolence, and evangelical missionary that intended to weaken Buddhist religion and national sovereignty. Believing in the sanctity of life and liberty, the American sojourner decided to promote his romanticised vision of ecumenical Buddhism for the pursuit of happiness

• How a quintessential American began the national renaissance in Sri Lanka

Colonel Henry Steel Olcott was famously denounced as an “unmitigated rascal” by the New York Times in 1871. In Sri Lanka, however, he is still remembered as the revered legend of Buddhist revival—and, by extension, the father of national renaissance. 

His 19th century work was essential for restoring Sri Lanka’s national identity as a Buddhist nation or the “Buddhist Kingdom of Lion” as it was described in fifth century by the Chinese monk Ven. Faxian, who studied Buddhism for two years in the capital city of Anuradhapura. 

This 17 February, the grateful nation of Sri Lanka commemorates the 118th anniversary of the passing of the visionary “White Buddhist” who convinced British rulers to declare 28 May 1885—the Vesak Day—a national holiday to celebrate the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. 

Journey to the West

The American rascal was born on 2 February 1832 to a devout Presbyterian family in New Jersey. In 1847, the then 15-year-old Puritan descendant of European Pilgrims attended New York University, before entering Columbia University. When his father, a businessman in New York, failed to support his education at Columbia, the brave young man decided to “Go West” to the new American frontier of the wilderness—an example of westward expansion to enlarge the territories of 19th century America. 

When his westward journey ended in Ohio, Olcott started to work as a laborer at his wealthy landowning uncle’s farmhouse and developed a great interest in agriculture. His relatives also introduced him to spiritualism—a belief that the living can communicate with the dead. With that exposure, Olcott returned to New York in 1853 and began to write articles on spiritual phenomena for the Spiritual Telegraph and served as the agricultural correspondent for the New York Tribune from 1858 to 1860. He won a number of medals of honour from the US Agricultural Society. 

In 1860, he married Mary Morgan, a daughter of the rector of the Trinity Church in New York. They had three sons and a daughter; unfortunately, the daughter and the youngest son died in early childhood—and their 14-year-old marriage eventually ended in divorce. However, he remained close with his two sons, corresponding frequently throughout their adulthood.  

When the American Civil War began in April 1861, Olcott enlisted in the Signal Corps and gained battlefield experience with the northern Union forces. He was later appointed as a special commissioner for the War Department to inspect alleged corruption in the recruitment offices. Noted for his courage and integrity, Olcott was promoted to the rank of colonel and assigned to the Department of the Navy. His work ethic and reputation as a disciplined Union officer led him to serve as a special commissioner to the Bureau of Military Justice to investigate the assassination of President Lincoln on 14 April 1865.

Soon afterwards, he became an insurance lawyer and a newspaper journalist. By this time, Olcott was regarded as an accomplished and respected leader in New York’s high society of gentlemen. 

Adventure to the East

After the Civil War, Olcott renewed his passion for spiritualism and mystical stories of those who lost their loved ones to the tragic conflict between the northern Union forces and the southern Confederacy. While reporting on these spiritual and mystical events, he developed a friendship with visiting Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) in Vermont. Madame Blavatsky—who travelled to China, India, Egypt, and Tibet to study ancient religious and spiritual texts—had finally met a lifelong partner in kindred spirit. They jointly established the Theosophical Society in 1875. Influenced by a blend of Eastern philosophies of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism with the esoteric ideas of Templars, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians, their theosophical undertakings aimed at understanding occultic mysteries. 

Blavatsky and Olcott left the United States in 1879 to find a new headquarters for their Theosophical Society in India. When they arrived in Colombo on 16 May 1880, Ven. Sri Piyaratana Tissa and Ven. Mohottivatte Gunananda warmly welcomed them with magnificent pageantry. Olcott, who had corresponded with these two scholarly monks, later described: “A huge crowd awaited us and rent the air with their united shout of ‘Sadhu! Sadhu!’ A white cloth was spread for us from the jetty steps to the road where carriages were ready, and a thousand flags were frantically waved in welcome.”

The American and Russian sojourners, who had previously declared themselves as Buddhists while living in the United States, knelt before a large statue of the Buddha and formally accepted the Five Buddhist Precepts (i.e., Pancha Sila in Pali) at the Weliwatta Vijayananda Temple in Galle on May 19, 1880. For the first time, Sri Lankans witnessed westerners paying respect to the native people and demonstrating reverence for Buddhism and its cultural traditions. Such occurrences hardly transpired in pubic under the occupying European colonists and evangelists—Portuguese, Dutch, and British—who promoted Western-centric education since the early 16th century.

The National Renaissance through Buddhism

Olcott’s eight-month journey throughout the colonial provinces exposed him to British dominance over native people and led him to reject the generally accepted claims of Western superiority, colonial benevolence, and evangelical missionary that intended to weaken Buddhist religion and national sovereignty. Believing in the sanctity of life and liberty, the American sojourner decided to promote his romanticised vision of ecumenical Buddhism for the pursuit of happiness. His mission included three different engagements for unleashing Buddhist-inspired human endeavours to realise his dream of national renaissance.

First, Olcott engaged Buddhist intellectuals in the Buddhist revival movement of the 1860s and 1870s and promoted the 1873 Panadura-like public debates between Christian missionaries and Buddhist monks. In fact, while living in America, Olcott was initially inspired by the series of public debates that culminated in the famous Panadura Debate between Wesleyan clergy Rev. David DeSilva and Ven. Mohottivatte Gunananda. After reading the translated book, Buddhism and Christianity Face to Face (1878), Olcott described his friend, Ven. Gunananda, as “the most brilliant Polemic Orator of the Island, the terror of the missionaries, with a very intellectual head, most brilliant and powerful champion of the Sinhalese Buddhism.” While promoting a Buddhist intellectual discourse, Olcott also studied Buddhism and Pali under Ven. Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala—an entrepreneurial maverick behind the Panadura Debate and the founder of the Vidyodaya Pirivena in 1873, now the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Kotte.

Second, Olcott was the leading catalyst in the nineteenth century Buddhist education. He was not only the admired ecumenical author of The Buddhist Catechism (1881), which was translated into over 20 languages and printed out in more than 40 editions, but also an advisor to the committee that designed the Buddhist flag in 1885 as the symbol of Buddhists in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. He was the fabled builder of over 400 Buddhist schools. It was his greatest and most consequential investment in developing the nation and preserving Buddhist education. The most notable national institutions include Ananda College (1886), Dharmaraja College (1887), Dharmasoka College (1913), Mahinda College (1892), Musaeus College (1891), and Nalanda College (1925).

Captivated by the spirit and gravitas of Buddhism, the “White Buddhist” found himself the endearing champion and cheerleader of Buddhist renaissance in Sri Lanka. He made Sri Lanka a proud nation with a thriving and unbroken tradition of Buddhist way of life. In his honour, major streets have been named and prominent statues have been erected in Sri Lanka and the United States

Third, Olcott was the champion in supporting Anagarika Dharmapala to lead the Buddhist revival movement globally. In close association with him, Olcott established the Maha Bodhi Society in Colombo in 1891 for a global mission. Olcott served as the first director general of the Maha Bodhi Society. A year later, its office was moved to Calcutta in India. The vitality of Buddhist revival spread to the homeland of Buddhism to restore the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha is believed to have attained Enlightenment. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With the financial support of Olcott, Dharmapala attended the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893—representing the Theravada tradition of Sri Lanka at the global stage for the first time and becoming the forerunner to propagate Buddhist teachings abroad.

Captivated by the spirit and gravitas of Buddhism, the “White Buddhist” found himself the endearing champion and cheerleader of Buddhist renaissance in Sri Lanka. He made Sri Lanka a proud nation with a thriving and unbroken tradition of Buddhist way of life. In his honour, major streets have been named and prominent statues have been erected in Sri Lanka and the United States.

Transformative leader

In his autobiographical Old Diary Leaves (1895), Olcott beautifully linked the two main phases of his life journey from the United States to Sri Lanka. As a prolific author and world traveller, Olcott reflected on his own experience in spiritualism and developed a rational philosophy for universal brotherhood without religious, ethnic, and racial divisions—jointly giving birth to the Theosophical Society with Madame Blavatsky. Olcott was a life-long active learner, open-minded educator, and reflective leader who promoted spiritual and philosophical teachings—blending various elements of Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism with Christian esoteric traditions.

Despite his accomplishments, Olcott received mixed reviews in the media. In 1872, New York Tribune described Olcott as the “‘most progressive American.” Meanwhile, in 1895, the New York Times condemned him as “a man bereft of reason” whose “insanity, though harmless, is, unfortunately, incurable.” All this came at a time when Olcott experienced tumultuous transformations in the prevailing political economy, especially against the backdrop of slavery and the enactment of apartheid-like Jim Crow laws. The changing socio-religious landscape—from the Biblical understanding of God to the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871)—defined Olcott and guided him to pursue a different realm of unconventional interests in mysticism, spiritualism, and theosophy.

Like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and many other enlightened Founding Fathers of the United States, Olcott was a Freemason—and most significantly, he was a quintessential American. Similar to their collective adherence to the Masonic motto, Olcott equally maintained his conviction about the universal brotherhood that: “Human progress is our cause, liberty of thought our supreme wish, freedom of conscience our mission, and the guarantee of equal rights to all people everywhere.” Olcott replicated this vision of America in Sri Lanka.

The purity of his mind and character may well be the reason why the posterity of his Buddhist schools and the progeny of his writings have come to admire and consider Olcott as their reincarnated Jesus, Buddha, or Emperor Ashoka. He is indeed a model of American charity and greatness to advance the purpose of the global nation as envisioned by the Founding Fathers of the United States. 

(The writer, an alumnus of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and a former Sri Lankan youth ambassador to the United Nations, is an award-winning American diplomat, military professor, UNESCO commissioner, academic administrator, published author, Masonic brother, and senior executive in government service in both Democratic and Republican administrations. He resides in Washington, DC, USA.)