Anagarika Dharmapāla is noted because he was: Along with Henry Steel Olcott and Helena Blavatsky, the creators of the Theosophical Society, he was a major reformer and revivalist of Sinhala Buddhism and an important figure in its western transmission.

He also inspired a mass movement of South Indian Dalits including Tamils to embrace Buddhism, half a century before B. R.

In 1875, during a period of Buddhist revival, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott had founded the Theosophical Society in New York City.

They were both very sympathetic to what they understood of Buddhism, and in 1880 they arrived in Ceylon, declared themselves to be Buddhists, and publicly took the Refuges and Precepts from a prominent Sinhalese bhikkhu.

As such, he took the eight precepts (refrain from killing, stealing, sexual activity, wrong speech, intoxicating drinks and drugs, eating after noon, entertainments and fashionable attire, and luxurious beds) for life.

[8] His trip to Bodh-Gaya was inspired by an 1885 visit there by Sir Edwin Arnold, author of The Light of Asia, who soon started advocating for the renovation of the site and its return to Buddhist care.

"One of the important factors in his rejection of theosophy centred on this issue of universalism; the price of Buddhism being assimilated into a non-Buddhist model of truth was ultimately too high for him.

In 1891 Anagarika Dharmapala was on a pilgrimage to the recently restored Mahabodhi Temple, where Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha – attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, India.

[17] Here he experienced a shock to find the temple in the hands of a Saivite priest, the Buddha image transformed into a Hindu icon and Buddhists barred from worship.

[19][20] After a protracted struggle, this was successful only after Indian independence (1947) and sixteen years after Dharmapala's own death (1933), with the partial restoration of the site to the management of the Maha Bodhi Society in 1949.

[21] Due to the efforts of Dharmapala, the site of the Buddha's parinibbana (physical death) at Kushinagar has once again become a major attraction for Buddhists, as it was for many centuries previously.

[17][22][23] Anagarika Dharmapala did not hesitate to lay the chief blame for the decline of Buddhism in India at the door of Muslim fanaticism.

[24] In 1893 Dharmapala was invited to attend the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago as a representative of "Southern Buddhism" – which was the term applied at that time to the Theravada.

By his early thirties he was already a global figure, continuing to travel and give lectures and establish viharas around the world during the next forty years.

In addition, he spends considerable time discussing the ideal Buddhist polity under Asoka and the Buddha's ethics for lay people.

DeVotta characterizes his rhetoric as having four main points: "(i) Praise – for Buddhism and the Sinhalese culture; (ii) Blame – on the British imperialists, those who worked for them including Christians; (iii) Fear – that Buddhism in Sri Lanka was threatened with extinction; and (iv) Hope – for a rejuvenated Sinhalese Buddhist ascendancy" (78).

He illustrated the first three points in a public speech: This bright, beautiful island was made into a Paradise by the Aryan-Sinhalese before its destruction was brought about by the barbaric vandals.

Its people did not know irreligion ... Christianity and polytheism [i.e. Hinduism] are responsible for the vulgar practices of killing animals, stealing, licentiousness, lying and drunkenness ...

The ancient, historic, refined people, under the diabolism of vicious paganism, introduced by the British administrators, are now declining slowly away.

[30][31] The biographical film, Anagarika Dharmapala Srimathano, on life history of Dharamapala was released in 2014, where Palitha Silva played the role.