Buddhist Kingship Research Articles

Buddhist Governance

This paper examines the relationship between the monastic saṅgha and the Buddhist king as the dhammarājā in the context of good governance in the contemporary world, with a specific focus on the Cambodian perspective. Through an examination of the historical and philosophical foundations of Buddhist governance, it argues for the enduring relevance and applicability of these principles in today’s diverse societies. A second line of argument explores how the saṅgha assembly, as a collective entity, contributes to the establishment of a just and harmonious society.
 Keywords: Buddhist governance, Saṅgha, Dhammarājā, Dhammādhippateyya, Dhammocracy, Pāramī, Cambodia.

Buddhist kingship and governance in the Dali Kingdom, 1140s to 1200

Like coeval classical kingdoms of Southeast Asia, the Dali Kingdom (937–1253 CE) of Yunnan adopted politico-religious ideologies for Buddhist kingship. Understanding Buddhist kingship as a medium for bolstering both spiritual and temporal authority, this article investigates if relations between twelfth-century Duan monarchs and their Gao ministers of state were the same as those depicted in post-thirteenth-century sources and scrutinises the argument for the eighteenth monarch Duan Zhixing (r.1173–1200) promoting himself as a dharmarāja to assert superiority over his Gao ministers. I reframe Duan-Gao relations from one of tension and conflict to one of collaboration, and postulate twelfth-century Duan-Gao relations then changing before the 1250s, when thirteenth century sources mention Gao domination. I argue for a working hypothesis of the dissemination of Duan Zhixing's politico-religious ideology dovetailing with administration at the kingdom's core areas. Dissemination was implemented by Gao ministers of state and monks from the royal Chongsheng Temple, and the process reveals a collaborative rather than confrontational relationship between Duan monarchs and the Gao clan.

Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, Review of Eugenie Merieau. Constitutional Bricolage: Thailand’s Sacred Monarchy vs. The Rule of Law

Eugenie Merieau is known for her series of studies on Thai constitutional law, ranging from the deep state theory1 to the 1932 constitutional compromise,2 from the lèse majesté3 to Buddhist kingship.4 Her new book, Constitutional Bricolage: Thailand’s Sacred Monarchy vs. the Rule of Law, is an epitome of her previous works. The book fascinates readers with years of research as well as first-person observation of Thailand’s fragile constitutions and constitutional scholars. Merieau’s description of Thai constitutionalism as a bricolage is apt. Thailand’s democratization has had its highs and lows, from an outburst of democratic movement to a long period of military dictatorship. No group or ideology has won control over the constitution-making process. As a result, Thai constitutionalism is built upon competing ideas, imported and developed at different times and in different contexts. Most constitutions met with an abrupt end, and were succeeded by a completely different one. Still, Merieau is able to find method in this madness.

Heaven and Buddhist Land: Buddhist Kingship of Southern Dynasties of China and the Maritime Silk Road in the Sixth Century

<p>本文以六世紀中國南朝與海上絲路國家的往來為基礎，透過佛教王權的視角，探討中國南朝官方如何運用佛教王權的理論，將南朝國都建康建構為東亞世界的中心，並以此中心建構新穎且特別的對外關係。南朝是中國與海上諸國貿易、外交往來的興盛期，建康城成為此一時期中國與海上絲路諸國往來的重要城市。在梁朝佛教王權的發展下，建康城幾乎成為了佛教都城，梁王權的性質深刻地影響中國與海上絲路諸國的外交往來。在六世紀中國的官方文獻記載中，南朝官方與海上絲路諸國的外交往來，佛教成為外交文書的創作母題。這些帶有佛教色彩的外交文書，透過中國官方對於外國文書的翻譯與製作，梁朝彷彿成為了海南諸國眼中理想的佛教帝國。這除了可見南朝佛教王權的發達，亦可發現中國梁王權利用佛教與海南國家締結關係，透過海上諸國對其佛教聖王地位的承認，滿足梁朝作為中國與東亞世界中心的目的。</p> <p> </p><p>This article focuses on the communication between Southern dynasties of China and countries of the maritime silk road in the sixth century, via the perspective of Buddhist kingship, to discuss how the authority of Southern dynasties of China utilized the Buddhist kingship as a political and diplomatic idea to construct the capital Jiankang (建康) as the center of East Asia and developed the new and special international relations. The international trade and diplomatic communications were prosperous in the period of Southern dynasties of China and the capital Jiankang had become an important city on the maritime silk road. Under the development of Buddhist kingship of the Liang dynasty, the capital Jiankang almost had become a Buddhist sacred city and the Buddhist kingship of the Liang dynasty strongly affected the diplomatic communications between the countries of the maritime silk road. In the Chinese official records in the sixth century, Buddhism was the main motif in the diplomatic documents of the Southern dynasties of China and countries of the maritime silk road. These highly Buddhism-influenced diplomatic documents, were translated and retouched by the Chinese official government of Liang that the kingdom of Liang almost regarded as the ideal Buddhist empire in the eyes of the countries of the maritime silk road. It could illustrate the development of the Buddhist kingship of Liang dynasty. Also, it demonstrates that the official authority of Liang took advantage of establishing formal diplomatic relations with Buddhist ideas, through receiving the diplomatic recognition of being the sacred Buddhist empire, Liang succeeded in fulfilling the goal of being the heartland of China and East Asia.</p> <p> </p>

A Constitutional Ethnography of Monarchy: Buddhist Kingship, “Granted Constitutionalism,” and Royal State Ceremonies in Thailand

AbstractThis paper defines constitutional ethnography as the cultural study of constitutionalism through its symbolic representations. By focusing on the materiality of constitutionalism as embodied in various state ceremonies such as ceremonies of “royal octroy” (constitution-granting ceremonies) as well as in state monuments honouring the Constitution, it strives to offer an ethnography of a polity’s constitutional identity. In this paper, I argue that in Thailand, Westernized Hindu-Buddhist state ceremonies and monuments using Westernized Hindu-Buddhist symbolism represent the Thai monarch as the ultimate law-giver holding permanent “constituent power” and therefore yielding extra-constitutional customary powers pre-existing the Constitution. This representation, in turn, informs Thai constitutional identity as defined incrementally by courts and jurists since the early twentieth century, which in turn informs present Thai constitutional interpretation. Therefore, this paper argues that the study of state ceremonies can be a useful entry point into the analysis of a “constitutional culture” shaping modes of constitutional interpretation.

The Progressive Monarchy of Bhutan: A Not-So-Absolute Monarchy to a Democratic Constitutional Monarchy

AbstractThis article provides a descriptive account of the evolution of the Bhutanese monarchy, and normative claims about its endurance and its nature, suggesting that the monarchy is both the expression of as well as the guardian of the country’s constitutional identity. Bhutan became a democratic constitutional monarchy by adopting the written Constitution in 2008 after a successful 100 years of hereditary monarchy. The willingness of successive monarchs to evolve based on changing times, their ability to ensure stability and continuity, and work for the benefits of the people and country guided by the principles of Buddhist kingship seem to have contributed not only in them benefitting from unqualified support of the people, but also in attaining the status of an expression of Bhutanese constitutional identity.

Buddhist Kingship and Symbolic Architecture in Silla Korea

The evolution of kingship in the early Korean state of Silla (ca. 300–935) was closely linked with the accommodation of various Buddhist practices that conferred symbolic legitimacy and promoted royal authority. During the sixth and seventh centuries, Silla’s sovereigns assimilated several overlapping approaches to statecraft and kingship drawing on Sinitic and imagined Indian models mediated through such Buddhist literature as the Sūtra for Humane Kings and the Sūtra of Golden Light, resonant with policies followed in the Northern and Southern Dynasties in China. Buddhist monarchs in Silla adopted several overlapping and increasingly sophisticated approaches to symbolically consolidate and project political authority. Silla merged native East Asian cosmological symbolism with Buddhist architecture to establish royal legitimacy. Hwangnyong Monastery combines Sinitic symbolism with Buddhist-inspired propaganda, which both assert Silla’s regional dominion. The significance of the yellow dragon was astrological, signifying Silla’s ascendancy among the Korean states. Hwangnyong Monastery was the locus for state-protection rituals centered on the Sūtra for Humane Kings beginning in the sixth century, but early monasteries built with a single golden hall and two pagodas may have some connection to the Sūtra of Golden Light. Sach’ŏnwang Monastery was the most important twin pagoda monastery in seventh-century Silla, with Yŏngmyo Monastery and Kamŭn Monastery also performing a magico-religious function as loci for ritual centered on divine protection by the four heavenly kings, the eight classes of divine beings, spirit generals, and wholesome deities from the unseen world.

The Ambiguous Allure of Ashoka: Buddhist Kingship as Precedent, Potentiality, and Pitfall for Covenantal Pluralism in Thailand

In the course of the 20th century, Thai political elites fashioned a religiopolitical settlement that has a great deal in common with covenantal pluralism. They did so, furthermore, by rediscovering a historic precedent in the Indian emperor Ashoka, and reinterpreting the image of this paragon of Buddhist kingship so as to emphasize theological humility and a benevolent embrace of religious pluralism. Since the fall of the absolute monarchy in 1932, this Ashokan ideal has been reflected in the Buddhist Thai king’s constitutionally defined role as upholder of religions—in the plural. However, recent developments in Thailand highlight the difficulties associated with sustaining a tolerant and robustly pluralistic policy regime over time, and the inescapable normative trade-offs that this involves.

Burmese Governance and the Buddhist Ironies of U Win Pe’s “Clean, Clear Water”

The Theravadan Buddhist dharma [teachings of the Buddha] and Burmese cultural identity are inseparable. Likewise, Burmese monarchs from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries revered India’s Mauryan ruler Ashoka (c. 280-200 BCE) as the epitome of noble Buddhist kingship. In recent decades, military regimes have drawn upon inherited Theravadan tropes and topoi, while dissident pro-democracy voices have invoked the Theravadan dharma to expose the hypocrisies of authoritarian rule in subtly disguised ironical writings. This essay argues that the Buddhist ironies permeating U Win Pe’s short story “Clean, Clear Water” epitomize this latter phenomenon. A witty folktale on one level, the story reverberates ironically with the tropes and topoi of the Theravadan dharma. On the one hand, “Clean, Clear Water” prompts critical reflection upon the suffering associated with the attitudes and policies of Burma’s military rulers; on the other hand, the story’s ambiguous ending encourages some wishful thinking about the ostensibly consensual politics of Burma’s contemporary democratic reformers. The essay closes with some observations about U Win Pe’s continuing dissident work and concludes that his multifold use of irony in “Clean, Clear Water” constitutes an important marker in Burma’s ongoing struggle to restore the country’s tradition of right relations between political power and Theravadan Buddhist thought and practice.

Le processus d’autonomisation des dieux dans le Japon médiéval. Le cas de Kirime dōji

This study follows in the footsteps of the methodological guidelines formulated by Jean-Pierre Vernant on the importance of considering gods as powers who build a system between them. The article looks at the construction process of Kirime, a minor deity of the pantheon of the three shrines of Kumano (south of Wakayama Prefecture) during the medieval period, whose representation in the maṇḍala of Kumano shows him with his right leg amputated. It will be shown that the empowerment of this deity from his tutelary god, Kumano’s gongen, was possible through the intensification of ancient ties with another subordinate deity, Akomachi, celebrated at Fushimi Inari Shrine (Kyoto). The study mainly draws on the analysis of the rite of expelling auxiliary spirits, or gohō okuri, that the pilgrims performed on their return from Kumano at Inari Shrine. I show that the manipulation of these dangerous and protective spirits was entrusted to the Myōbu deity, assimilated to Akomachi, and through her, by the Shinto-Buddhist equivalents, to the ḍākinī, dangerous Buddhist deities. The question of the origin of the one-legged nature of the god leads us to see this figure as the synthesis of mythical elements related to the mastery of water with the transgressive figure of the Buddhist king Kalmāṣapāda.

Divine Kingship in Medieval Sri Lanka: Dynamics in Traditions of Power and Virtue in South Asia

The present article focuses on Sri Lankan views of divine kingship to illustrate how the figure of the king was developed in ways that borrowed and were shaped by the transfer of Hindu notions of kings and gods around the period of intensive Hindu interventions into the island from the tenth to thirteenth centuries CE. After discussing the paradigmatic figure of King Aśoka, the virtuous king (*dhammarāja*) held to be the model for all subsequent monarchs in the tradition, we will examine inscriptional and poetic writings that conflated Sri Lankan kings with Hindu gods. The dynamics of comparing kings with gods has ancient roots in India, and these notions were adopted by Sri Lankan Buddhists during the long “medieval” period of roughly the tenth to the sixteenth centuries CE. The dynamic introduction of new strands of Buddhist kingship expanded upon the figure of the king. I argue that this development was primarily metaphorical in nature, and it was further enhanced by eulogizing kings as bodhisattvas, or future Buddhas. By incorporating much of the language and notions of divine kingship from the Hindu tradition, Sri Lankan Buddhism made kingship into the dynamic site for cultural borrowing. Yet it stabilized and reinforced its local traditions by comparing kings with gods and bodhisattvas, presenting them as being *like* extraordinary beings in the context of praise for their power and virtue.

Stranger diviners and their stranger clients: Popular cosmology-making and its kingly power in Buddhist Thailand

Marshall Sahlins argues that kings are ‘stranger kings’, as they typically originate from outside their kingdom or from the celestial realms. He advances that kings draw authority precisely from an ability to appropriate a geographic and cosmological Other for the benefit of their subjects. With this article, I propose that, in contemporary Thailand, a kingdom ruled by a Buddhist monarch, this defining ability of kings spreads to commoners. An ethnographic study of diviners (mo du) and their clients (luk kha) in Bangkok reveals that Thai Buddhists routinely make cosmologies. Such cosmology-making entails appropriating foreign and divine forms of knowledge in the manner of kings. I argue that this phenomenon allows commoners to master the idioms of power of Thai Buddhist kingship. This results in tensions between commoners, and places them in an ambiguous relationship with the monarchic state.

BUDDHIST BUREAUCRACY and RELIGIOUS FREEDOM in THAILAND

In accordance with Thai conceptions of Buddhist kingship, Thai rulers have felt obliged to devote considerable energies towards the promotion and protection of Buddhism. Over the past century (and more), state laws have been instituted and bureaucratic agencies established to regulate and implement such promotional and protective activities. This article outlines some broad trends and patterns in the bureaucratization of Buddhism in Thailand, and discusses their implications for religious freedom. It argues that although Buddhism has been extensively bureaucratized, the implications for religious freedom have been less severe than one might perhaps expect, owing not least to the fact that Buddhism is a monastic religion. However, recent developments—taking place in the wake of the 2014 military coup and the 2016 royal succession—suggest that the legal environment is changing in ways that may have negative implications for religious freedom in Thailand.

BUDDHIST BUREAUCRACY AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THAILAND

AbstractIn accordance with Thai conceptions of Buddhist kingship, Thai rulers have felt obliged to devote considerable energies towards the promotion and protection of Buddhism. Over the past century (and more), state laws have been instituted and bureaucratic agencies established to regulate and implement such promotional and protective activities. This article outlines some broad trends and patterns in the bureaucratization of Buddhism in Thailand, and discusses their implications for religious freedom. It argues that although Buddhism has been extensively bureaucratized, the implications for religious freedom have been less severe than one might perhaps expect, owing not least to the fact that Buddhism is a monastic religion. However, recent developments—taking place in the wake of the 2014 military coup and the 2016 royal succession—suggest that the legal environment is changing in ways that may have negative implications for religious freedom in Thailand.

The Shōkokuji Pagoda: Building the Infrastructure of Buddhist Kingship in Medieval Japan

The Shōkokuji Pagoda: Building the Infrastructure of Buddhist Kingship in Medieval Japan

A Tide of Merit

Abstract Stressing the importance of 5th–6th-century copper-plate charters connected to the Viṣṇukuṇḍin dynasty for the history of Buddhism in Āndhradeśa, this article demonstrates that, contrary to earlier scholarly assumptions, and despite the paucity of archeological evidence for Buddhist activity at that time, Buddhist lineages still benefitted from lavish donations by ruling families. This study consists of three parts: the first explores the representation of two Viṣṇukuṇḍin rulers as Buddhist kings, and shows how their portraits and their aspirations are permeated by the ideology of the Bodhisattvayāna. The second part examines one of the main recipients of royal donations, the Sthā̆vira/Theriya lineage of the Tāmraparṇīyas, already known from inscriptions issued under the previous Ikṣvāku dynasty. The analysis of these earlier records from Nagarjunakonda in light of little-studied copper plates shows that the Tāmraparṇīyas had a strong institutional presence in Āndhradeśa from the mid-3rd to the late 6th century. The lineage’s connections with Laṅkā and with other Theriya centres along the Bay of Bengal are delineated through a close examination of the terminology used in the inscriptions under scrutiny, in light of co-eval records, and especially of Pāli Vinaya literature and historical narratives. The last part of this article focuses on a poetic allusion to the episode of the Buddha’s victory over Māra included in the opening stanza of a grant issued by king Pr̥thivīśrīmūla. The evidence suggests that this record connects for the first time the water poured by Śākyamuni in his previous lives as a Bodhisattva with a flood that drove away Māra’s army from the seat of Awakening, a motif that grew—like a tide—and spread across Southeast Asia.

Old fights, new meanings: Lions and elephants in combat

Old fights, new meanings: Lions and elephants in combat

Buddhist Kingship, the Kami, and Modernity : Comparative Considerations( Shinbutsu Shugo and Modernity)

Buddhist Kingship, the Kami, and Modernity : Comparative Considerations( Shinbutsu Shugo and Modernity)

3. BUDDHIST TECHNOLOGIES OF STATECRAFT AND MILLENNIAL MOMENTS

ABSTRACTThere are striking family resemblances between models and modes of kingship in the Safavid and Mughal worlds discussed by Azfar Moin and those that characterized Buddhist kingship in the premodern Indian Ocean arena, which encompassed polities including Poḷonnāruva, Dambadeṇiya, Koṭṭē, Bagan, Sukhothai, and Chiang Mai. In courtly contexts, Buddhists—operating at the intersection of intellectual traditions in Pali and Sanskrit languages—depended upon protective technologies including astrology and interpreted threats and prospects according to millennial science. Working comparatively, across the premodern Indian Ocean and Indo‐Persian worlds, can help historians of Buddhism and Islam to understand more clearly the intellectual histories and repertoires of royal practice according to which kings and strongmen within each sphere sought to gain and retain the throne.

Monuments and Mandalas in Medieval Kyoto: Reading Buddhist Kingship in the Urban Plan of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu

Kyoto’s urban landscape was transformed during the late fourteenth century through the ambitious building projects of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408). By examining these projects, I identify a grand urban vision indicative of monumental aspirations. The creation of palaces and temples helped Yoshimitsu infiltrate and eventually dominate warrior, imperial, and religious spheres of influence in Kyoto. More important, the findings suggest the shogun leveraged the allusive power of architecture and urban planning to forge an anthropocosmic connection between himself and the divine. I suggest that Yoshimitsu—like his counterparts in the premodern Buddhist centers of Angkor, Bagan, and Borobudur—sought to transform Japan’s medieval capital into an expression of sacred geography, thereby legitimizing the Kyoto court at a time of imperial schism and advancing his own aim of attaining a status synonymous with dharma king.