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THE CREATION OF THE HUNTER Source:Island Review: Robert Sidharthan Perinbanayagam, Professor of Sociology (emeritus), Hunter College of the City University of New York Gananath Obeyesekere (Colombo: Sailfish Publications:2022) In earlier works Obeyesekere demolished the claims of both Western scholars and European colonizers that cannibalism was a general practice among the natives of some of the countries they sought to rule and exploit and with his work he de-apotheosized Captain Cook and his sanctification by some western scholars. In his work on Sri Lanka he was at it again. With his book on the Pattini cult and the practices at the temple in Kataragama, he challenged certain constructions about Sinhala society and its ethnic make-up and religious practices. In his work on Buddhism in modern Sri Lanka he showed how it was influenced by Protestant Christianity just as it did in Bengal, in the shape of the Brahma Samaj. And so ...