Social and Religious Aspects of Royal Power in Medieval Burma

Abstract

It is with the social and religious aspects surrounding kingship rather than the monarchy's own political structure that this study is mainly concerned. Kyansittha emphasised certain legendary aspects of his origins and by examining these, as they appeared in his inscriptions, it is possible to explore their wider significance for his contemporary society, and to make some deductions about the nature of that society and its relations with the court. In approaching these questions chiefly through the medium of the inscriptions, it may be possible to reduce the danger of viewing them by the standards of a different age and a different society. This danger is, however, very difficult to avoid when one is dealing, as here, with a society whose sense of time and causal relations is as fluid as the medieval Burmese. Rituals, names and events constantly refer to the past and to the future in order to emphasize their solemn importance for contemporary society. One vehicle for this was the Buddhist cycle of birth and rebirth; another was Kyansittha's skill in bringing together major symbols of former empires, or earlier religious cults, into a new synthesis which was subservient to the Buddha but paid due respect to old and disparate loyalties.