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Gordon Douglas

 

 

Gordon Douglas has traditionally been seen as the first European to become ordained as a Bhikkhu in Southeast Asia although Laurence Carroll (U Dhammaloka) and others are now understood to have been earlier.

He was ordained in Siam in 1899 or 1900 and assumed the name Bhikkhu Asoka or Ashoka. There are conflicting accounts of what happened after his ordination. One account is that he died six months later, the cause being cholera. The other account is that he relocated to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and lived there until his death in 1905. The latter is most likely because Dr. Cassius Pereira, later Bhikkhu Kassapa Thera, gives an account of him in Ceylon and interacting with his family.

 

It is also suggested that before his ordination as a Bhikkhu, in Ceylon, Gordon Douglas served as the head of Mahinda College in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1898.

The ordination of Western nationals originated with H. Gordon Douglas as Ven. Asoka in 1899 and a chemical engineer Charles Henry Allan Bennett as Ven. Annada Metteyya in 1902 in Burma as opined by most of the intellectuals. But the result of the research carried out in early 2000 by Prof. Alicia Turner with Prof. Laurence Cox and Prof. Brain Bocking found that an Irish National named Laurence Carroll had been ordained by the name Ven. U. Dhammaloka before 1900.

Even if it is stated in the book ‘The Life of Nyanatiloka Thera’ that an Englishman named H. Gordon Douglas was ordained as Asoka in Burma in 1899, Prof. Laurence Cox and Prof. Alicia Turner in their book re-iterated that the ordination of Douglas took place in Sri Lanka in February 1899. Gordon Douglas who was ordained as Asoka Thera was the Principal of Mahinda College, Galle in 1898 and passed away from Cholera in 1900 in Burma.

 

 

 

 

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