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The E-Sylum: Volume 14, Number 51, December 11, 2011, Article 15

US CITIZEN HONORED ON SRI LANKAN COMMEMORATIVE COIN

Kavan Ratnatunga has published an article about a new Sri Lankan coin that honors a U.S. citizen. -Editor

This is the First Lankan commemorative coin with portrait of an US citizen - Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907).

The following news item appeared in Today's Sunday Times www.sundaytimes.lk/111211/Plus/plus_02.html which has been edited from longer version submitted. coins.lakdiva.org/cbsl/2011_a125_coin.html

Below is a biographical excerpt from WikiPedia, an image of the coin, and a portrait of Col Olcott. The coin features left to right portraits of Hikkaduwa Sri Sumangala Thera (1827-1911), Migettuwatte Gunananda Thera (1823-1890), and Colonel Henry Steele Olcott (1832-1907). -Editor

Ananda-College-coin-1 H.S._Olcott-portrait

Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (August 2, 1832 - February 17, 1907) was an American military officer, journalist, lawyer and the co-founder and first President of the Theosophical Society.

Olcott was the first well-known American of European ancestry to make a formal conversion to Buddhism. His subsequent actions as president of the Theosophical Society helped create a renaissance in the study of Buddhism. Olcott is considered a Buddhist modernist for his efforts in interpreting Buddhism through a Westernized lens.

Olcott was a major revivalist of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and he is still honored in Sri Lanka for these efforts. Olcott has been called by Sri Lankans "one of the heroes in the struggle of our independence and a pioneer of the present religious, national and cultural revival". More ardent admirers have claimed that Olcott was a Bodhisattva.

Olcott was born in 1832 in Orange, New Jersey, the oldest of the six children of Presbyterian businessman Henry Wyckoff Olcott and Emily Steel Olcott. As a child, Olcott lived on his father's New Jersey farm. During his teens he attended first the College of the City of New York and then Columbia University

To read the complete article, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Steel_Olcott

For more details, see: coins.lakdiva.org/commemorative/2011_ananda125_2000r.html

Wayne Homren, Editor

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To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com

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