…importation of an ordination—an act of using trans-regional monastic intermediaries to enable local initiators of reordination to start a new monastic lineage—did not necessarily entail the transplantation of the lineage of the intermediary or any features associated with that lineage in its location of origin.

This book chapter explains transregional ordination lineages in early modern Southern Asia. It does this by following the movements of the monk Sāralaṅkā, an eighteenth-century Thai monk who traveled to Kandy and then to Burma. The overall study attempts to show that, even in a short period of time, imported ordination developed its own independent identity within its new surroundings, and how even trans-regional monks adapted to local conditions.