Michelle Ruth Gamburd has written an engaging and illuminating book on an important topic: the place of alcohol in a Buddhist setting in southern Sri Lanka. Although practicing Buddhists routinely recite the precept that promises abstention from intoxication, real rural Buddhists in Sri Lanka often do drink, often to excess, and often with serious consequences for their immediate family and sometimes for the wider community around them. Gamburd's drinkers are almost entirely men, mostly poor and lower class, sometimes from families whose adult women are thousands of miles away working as domestic servants in the Persian Gulf (the topic of Gamburd's previous book, based on work in the same community). Some of these men drink occasionally, especially at big public events such as weddings and funerals, but a significant minority drink heavily and as often as they can find the money to pay for it. What they usually drink is...

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