Summary

“The Grove of Ascetics” opens with a description of epigraphist and archaeologist Palipana who, it is revealed, was instrumental in wrestling the field of study in Sri Lanka away from the Europeans. He is a minimalist man, sparing in his compliments of others. Sarath is one of his four protégées. Sarath studied under Palipana for three years, which he recalls as some of the hardest and most intellectually challenging years of his life. Palipana was disgraced after he fabricated the discovery and translation of a linguistic text found on rock graffiti that, he claimed, told the story of the sixth century in Sri Lanka. However, one of Palipana’s protégées pointed out that there was no evidence that this subtext existed and, when a group of historians was unable to locate the runes about which he wrote...