Monastic Institutions Research Articles

A preliminary note on the successive renovations of Samye Monastery

This paper provides remarks on the history of renovations and restorations of Samye monastery, which was Tibet’s first Buddhist monastic institution, founded in the late-8th century. The research for this article was compiled from biographies of famous Buddhist masters associated with Samye, and Samye’s Register (dkar chag) written in different periods. The historical significance of Samye Monastery in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan political history is briefly discussed in the first section, before I turn to consider the successive renovations in chronological order, with a focus on the identities of the restorers involved and major events that led to these renovations and restorations. Exploring the history of Samye’s renovations provides valuable details about the motives that compelled different Tibetan Buddhist sects to provide patronage for sacred sites in Tibetan Buddhism, and the connections of these motives with broader political and cultural events in Tibet and surrounding areas.

Peasant Initiative and Monastic Estate Management in 10th Century Lotharingia

This paper examines the degree of economic and political autonomy of peasants in monastic estates in 10th century Lotharingia. While it is beyond doubt that local societies were deeply enmeshed in networks of aristocratic control, it is also possible to identify areas of autonomy. Monastic lordship was not all encompassing as it was structurally limited in its capacity to control every aspect of peasants’ lives and to prevent all forms of disobedience. Despite the violent and sometimes arbitrary nature of aristocratic power, negotiations between peasants and lords played an important role, especially as peasant households developed a form of subsistence economy that involved production for commercial exchange. In this context, some monasteries were willing to grant more productive means and autonomy to peasants. These initiatives were sometimes supported by a paternalistic «vocabulary of lordship» and a «moral economy» that patronized peasants, but could also be mobilized to support their interests.

Elitism and Status: Reassessing Settlement Hierarchy in Early Medieval England

The complexities of identifying and understanding settlement hierarchy in early medieval England (c. 5th–11th centuries) is the focus of much debate. Within this field of enquiry, settlement arrangements, architecture, landholding patterns and material culture are commonly used in the identification of a range of settlement types. These include royal complexes, monastic institutions, towns and trading/production sites such as emporia. This same evidence is also used to interpret the status and role of these sites in early medieval England. This paper advances the current understanding of settlement hierarchy through an assessment of rural settlements and their material culture. These settlements have received comparatively less scholarly attention than higher profile early medieval sites such as elite, ecclesiastical and urban centres, yet represent a rich source of information. Through analysis of material culture as evidence for the consumption, economic and social functions which characterise rural settlements, a picture of what were inherently complex communities is presented. The findings further support the need to reassess settlement hierarchy in early medieval England and a new hierarchical model is proposed.

Buddhist Business and Benevolence in Leh, Ladakh

Due to a burgeoning tourism industry in the Indian Himalayan region of Ladakh, Buddhist monasteries now have lucrative means for generating income through tourism-related business and financial support from international sponsors and local business owners. Where previously Buddhist monasteries were dependent on the donations and labour of the lay community, currently, with the accumulation of surplus wealth, many Buddhist leaders of prominent monasteries have begun flipping this donor system around. Throughout this article, I look at how Buddhist monastic leaders have invested surplus economic resources into philanthropic projects as a way to ‘give back’ to the wider community. I argue that the philanthropic initiatives by Buddhist leaders in Ladakh help to position Buddhist monastics as taking a leading role in the social and economic transformation of the region, thus working to push back against processes of secularization that threaten to decrease the influence of Buddhist monastic institutions.

Monks, Monasteries, and Muslim Scribes: Three Parchment House Sales from the 4th/10th-Century Fayyūm

Abstract This article presents editions of three Arabic parchment deeds of sale from the 4th/10th-century Fayyūm Oasis belonging to two monks, Babā Banīla and Babā Buṭrus, of the Dayr al-Qalamūn monastery. The transactions recorded in our documents are mundane in and of themselves. But put together they offer bits of insight into Christian society in rural medieval Egypt, the notarial practice of provincial Muslim scribes, the relationship between monastic and Islamic legal institutions, and the important but little-attested Dayr al-Qalamūn.

I Florensi nelle strutture politiche, religiose e socio-economiche della Calabria (XII–XIII sec.)

Abstract A specific area of north-eastern Calabria, between the Sila and the Ionian Sea, profoundly Greek and with a degree of stability from the Byzantine to the Norman era and even beyond, represents an ideal local area in which to document the development of the Florensian monastic organization, with its political, social and religious peculiarities. The interaction of Joachim of Fiore and his monks with the political and ecclesiastical authorities did not differ from those of other monastic institutions in the area. As regards the latter, the Cistercians in particular, despite the criticisms levelled by the abbot of Fiore, exhibited similar practical behaviour, both religious and economic, especially in the struggle for the demanium, and this sometimes led to conflict. Both „new“ orders, however, participated in the transition of the area towards the Latin reform.

Questioning the Revival

A common narrative of Buddhist monasticism in modern China is that monastic institutions were virtually eliminated during the Cultural Revolution period (1966–1976) but have undergone continuous revival since that time. This simplistic narrative highlights differences in state-monastic relations between the Maoist and post-Maoist eras, even as it oversimplifies various developments. In this article, I analyze the notion of revival and assess the state of Han Buddhist monasticism in the prc. My focus is on clarifying the “basic facts” of monasticism, including the numbers and types of monastics and monastic institutions. I draw on studies published since Holmes Welch’s works as well as on my own fieldwork conducted in China since 2006. This article questions the revival metaphor and shows that it is misleading. First, as Welch noted for the Republican period, recent developments are characterized by innovations as much as by revivals. Second, evidence for the growth of monasticism from around the year 2000 is weak. Yet in two aspects, monasticism today revives characteristics of Republican-period monasticism: ritual performance is central to the monastic economy, and Buddhist seminaries are important for monastic doctrinal education.

Belt-and-Road Buddhists

Although religious institutions and communities have grown significantly in China since the early 1980s, the recent past has seen difficult conditions for the practice of religion, with increased surveillance and oppressive acts by the Chinese government. Changes to government policies and priorities make it difficult to generalize about the conditions of religious practice over the course of the Reform period. This paper examines the monastic institutions of the Dai-lue people of Sipsongpannā (Xishuangbanna 西双版纳) in Yunnan province. The Dai-lue are a minority group that practices Theravada Buddhism. Their religious institutions have expanded significantly in the last four decades, but they have done so in the midst of radical change in the economic and governing structures of the region. The paper looks at this development both across the forty years of the Reform era, and in the context of a promotion and international conference sponsored by the sangha of Sipsongpannā. I argue that the changes to the monastic institutions of the Dai-lue need to be seen in light of changes to “religion-making from above,” the policies, rules, and structures that the Chinese state establishes to manage religious communities, as well as “religion-making from below,” the responses of the Dai-lue to these changes.

An Aristotelian Interpretation of Bojo Jinul and an Enhanced Moral Grounding

This paper explores the eclecticism of Bojo Jinul (1158–1210 CE), who is arguably the most influential historic figure in establishing and developing the Buddhist monastic institution of Korea. As a great harmonizer of the conflicting Buddhist trends in the late Goryeo period, Jinul not only shaped the foundation of the traditional monastic discipline balanced between theory and practice but also made Korean Buddhist thoughts known to a larger part of East Asia. I revisit the eclecticism of Bojo Jinul on harmonizing the two conflicting understandings of enlightenment represented by Seon (Cha’n) and Gyo (Hwaeom study) schools: the former stressing sudden enlightenment by sitting mediation and oral transmission of dharma and the latter stressing gradual cultivation by the formal training of textual and doctrinal understanding specifically on the Hwaeom Sutra. Utilizing the metaphysics of Aristotle, I confirm the logical validity of his eclecticism and address some of its moral implications.

Between Spiritual Economy and Religious Commodification: Negotiating Temple Autonomy in Contemporary China

AbstractThis research investigates the contentious use of temple assets amid widespread local state-led religious commodification in contemporary China. Based on a comparative analysis of 22 historic temples, this paper argues that given the choice, temple leaders strive for property-management autonomy, which they negotiate on two fronts. Externally, owing to the immobility of historic temple assets, temple leaders avoid antagonizing local state agents by demonstrating political conformity and the temple's economic contribution. Internally, they seek to build a donation-based merit economy to sustain the monastic institution. Since such autonomy must operate within the authoritarian state's regulatory framework, the restrained contestation of the religious leadership actually helps to strengthen state control over religion.

Modernity and ‘publicness’: The career of the Mysore matha, 1880–1940

Fin de siècle Mysore witnessed the gathering force of interminable rivalries of prestige between mathas (monastic institutions). Contests over the types and number of honours enjoyed by travelling gurus in Mysore became frequent, reaching a crescendo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By this time, the contests were also being adjudicated in courts, as the Mysore administration began to exert greater bureaucratic control over these institutions. The widening sphere of engagements of the modernising matha reveals that a new notion of publicness was taking shape, co-constituted by a triangulation of forces: on one side was the rapidly bureaucratising Mysore state which brought a different visibility and public accountability to the matha; a second side comprised the matha itself developing a new, socially purposive public life. Finally, the matha’s redefinition was aided and shaped by the adherents of the matha, emerging as a ‘public’ which both drew on and remained at a remove from its caste identity. This period of reform had enduring consequences, as the Mysore matha took on a supplementary state form after Indian Independence in 1947.

On moving relics and monastic reform

In Ravenna’s hagiographic traditions, including the Liber pontificalis of its bishops, the translations of relics within the city and its suburbs, as well as narratives of relics that departed, were important components not only for local cults, but as reflections of the city’s status and history, and witnessed renewal of its ecclesiastical and monastic institutions. In seeking to understand the relationship between translations and reform, this article first presents the history of relics translations in Ravenna from the sixth to the tenth century as contexts for the Vita Probi, a narrative commemorating the discovery and translation of the relics of Probus, one of the city’s early bishops. This text, written in the 960s as a celebration of the final translation of his relics into the city, incorporated narrative material about the saint’s life into a longer description about his relics and the misadventures and return to proper conduct of local religious communities, at a moment when new norms of reform were on the horizon.

Las ínsulas extrañas de Ernesto Cardenal: dinámicas de comercialización, purificación e institucionalización en el proyecto de Solentiname

Based on a reading of Las ínsulas extrañas, one of the volumes of Ernesto Cardenal's memoirs that deals with the foundation of the Solentiname community, this article demonstrates the importance of this community as a counter-institution, as well as its particular use of cultural goods as an economic resource. Solentiname functioned as a counter-institution of the (Trappist) monastic institution and the dictatorial state in Nicaragua. In order to support the community, Cardenal made strategic use of cultural goods (painting, poetry, sculpture) through their promotion and commercialization. However, as the paper demonstrates, this signified a complex dynamic of appropriation and purification of consumption from a spiritual perspective. The article emphasizes the interrelation of the poetic and cultural practice of Cardenal regarding this strategic use, as well as his importance as a cultural agent, and his use of avant garde topics in establishing his relationship with his peasant disciples in the community.

Crónicas Conventuais de Fundação: Especificidades e Modelos Conventual

:Over the course of Six hundred and Seven hundred, the conventual chronicles produced in order to revive uplifting memories of past times concerning plural monastic institutions, were gaining expression, thanks to (among other factors) the increase in editorial production that marked the Modern Era. The literary treatment of the text of Soror Antonia Baptista - Livro da Fundacao do santo Convento de nossa Senhora da esperanca de Villa vicoza e de algưas plantas que em elle se criarao pera o ceo dignas de memorea, completed in 1657, send the insertion of his work in the panorama of female convent writing, of the 17th century, using contemporaries models, drawn up under similar conditions and with approximate intentions.

Jūzenji, ou l’enfance du divin

During the medieval period and till the Meiji Restoration, Jūzenji was one of the preeminent gods of the Hie Shrines (known today as Hiyoshi Taisha). The very name “Jūzenji” sounds rather strange for a kami, and it has received various Buddhist and “Shintō” interpretations. It points toward a Buddhist monastic institution, that of the “ten dhyāna masters” (jūzenji), which was important in the Nara and Heian periods but had declined by the time Jūzenji’s cult arose, toward the eleventh century. There are few representations of Jūzenji. He is usually represented as a young monk or as a youth (dōji or chigo). Indeed, youth is his most characteristic feature, and it links him not only with a category of more or less divine or demonic deities but also with an important figure often represented as a child or an adolescent, Shōtoku Taishi. The figure of Jūzenji is also intimately related to the image of the monkey, the emissary of Sannō Gongen, the main protector of Mount Hiei. Jūzenji was above all an oracular god. He delivered his oracles not only through incubatory dreams but also through children that he possessed. The sudden and violent nature of Jūzenji’s child possession, as reported in literary sources, reveals an unruly, demonic nature. Yet Jūzenji also came to be perceived as a deity watching over the destiny of humans. This transformation was made easier through his identification with the snake deity Ugajin, and, through him, with the so-called “wild gods of the placenta” (ena kōjin). This identification took place within a specific context, that of the beliefs concerning placenta deities. In his role as placenta deity, Jūzenji was mostly a nurturing deity that brings “longevity and happiness,” yet, as “wild deity” (kōjin), he remained essentially ambivalent—and potentially dangerous when not properly initiated. The ascension of Jūzenji into the medieval pantheon led to identifying him with the “god of destiny,” Shukujin. This identification derives logically from the nature and functions of that deity—a child-deity related to Jizō, but also an oracular deity and a deity of limits, and a violent deity of the kōjin type, perceived as the aramitama of the mountain god Sannō Gongen. This latent symbolic complex was brought to the forefront with the emergence of certain social groups (the artistic guilds of the sarugakusha and biwa hōshi, and the inhabitants of the shuku, way-stations). This complex symbolic network explains how, even within the orthodox circles of Enryakuji and Hie Shrine, Jūzenji eventually became a “god of the warp and woof of Heaven and Earth.”

Supercilious monk at Kiṭāgiri

AbstractThis paper focuses on the concepts of etiquette and politeness within a genre of Buddhist texts known as “vinaya”, or monastic law. These texts were created for the purpose of regulating behavior within the monastic institution. While they are often described by the tradition as a set of ethical principles, the content of monastic law codes also includes many things that would be better categorized as examples of normative protocol, encompassing mundane, everyday social situations that promote harmony between the monastic institution and its economic patrons. I argue here that a distinct concept of politeness can be gleaned from the narratives in these texts, despite the lack of such a category in the tradition’s own account of itself. To illustrate this point, I analyze several stories concerned with the proper deportment of monastics, demonstrating that the standards for monastic behavior were sometimes at odds with the expectations of the lay communities that supported them.

Organising Landed Property: Manorial Administration Strategies in the 15th and Early 16th Centuries

Abstract This paper provides an analysis of micro-level processes in the land administration of two different monastic estates, Lambach in Upper Austria and Klosterneuburg in Lower Austria, in the 15th and early 16th centuries. It argues that several different institutional factors can be seen as driving forces of administrative progress and innovation. To keep up with not always congruent economic, legal and social demands, the two monasteries pursued different strategies in administering their landed property. Their approaches and advancements indicate that the development of bureaucratic use of written texts should not be seen as one of the ever-increasing rationalities but rather as the result of a multilayered cultural process.

Ceṭṭiyār Vedānta: Fashioning Hindu Selves in Colonial South India

This article seeks to pluralize current scholarly perceptions of what constitutes Advaita Vedānta in colonial India. It suggests, in particular, that the tendency to concentrate on the so-called “neo-Vedānta” of a handful of cosmopolitan reformers has obscured other kinds of innovative Vedānta-inspired discourses that have significantly shaped the formation of modern Hindu consciousness. These discourses are indebted, in ways that are only beginning to be understood, to religious traditions rooted in particular regions and vernacular languages. The article illustrates this argument with reference to the Kōvilūr Ātīṉam, a Vedānta-affiliated monastic institution in Tamil-speaking South India founded by Mutturāmaliṅka Nāṉatēcika Cuvāmikaḷ (1791–1847). Examining the significance of this figure’s life story for the wealthy Nāṭṭukkōṭṭai Ceṭṭiyār merchant community that comprises the Ātīṉam’s social base, the article explores how social aspirations, traditions of monastic authority, and vernacular Vedāntic literature contribute toward a colonial project of caste self-fashioning that I refer to as “Ceṭṭiyār Vedānta”.

DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL ENLIGHMENT AND PEDAGOGICAL ACTIVITY IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS OF UKRAINE AT THE KYIV-PECHERSK LAVRA IN THE 19TH-18TH CENTURIES

Development of educational - educational activities and training in higher educational institutions of Ukraine spiritual in Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra began in the mid of the mid-nineteenth century. This was facilitated by the allocation of educational courses from the context of philosophy and moral theology, increased secular aspects of education and teaching pedagogical subjects and the requirement to prepare high-quality teachers. It was created by a number of manuals and textbooks that evaluated both contemporaries and the next generation of scientists, educators and teachers.History of education in the Ukrainian lands is primarily a history of the monastic institutions of education. Since the XVIІI century in Central Ukraine (Poltava, Pereyaslav, Chernihiv), the demand for high quality secular and religious education in accordance with the best European models. Cells of such education are training systems, "monastic monastery – Seminary", in particular in Poltava (Holy cross monastery Slavonic Seminary) and Pereyaslavl (ascension monastery – Seminary of Pereyaslav), which was formed by descendants of the Kyiv-Pechersk monastery and monastic monasteries. This testifies to the high scientific-pedagogical and organizational effectiveness in a difficult economic, social, political circumstances of the historical period and the territory of Central Ukraine educational complex "the monastery-Seminary" as centers of spirituality, education, mentality of the Ukrainian people. In fact, Holy cross and Poltava and Pereyaslavl Voznesensky Cathedral monasteries for their money, as earned by the monks, and secured charitable donations of the population, kept and developed original educational complexes, which included: the Seminary, the Seminary for courses, monastic library, a temple, a hospital, several parochial schools, United by a common concern about the appropriate level of education as spiritual persons, and secular population of the region.

Building for the Buddha: Patrons in the Pa-la Kingdom

In conventional historiography, kings of the Pa-la dynasty are celebrated for upholding the last bastion of Buddhism in early medieval eastern India. The article demonstrates, on the basis of epigraphic evidence, that along with royal patrons, there were other categories of benefactors actively involved in the building and sustenance of Buddhist establishments. In fact, compared to the brief epigraphic history of royal patronage, there is a more sustained record of support provided to Buddhist establishments by subordinate rulers and Buddhist monks in the Pa-la domain. Through a close analysis of two twelfth-century stone inscriptions, an attempt is made to track continuities and changes in the nature of patronage provided by these two categories in a milieu defined by the presence of Buddhist institutions of trans-regional renown and participation of patrons from other realms. By paying attention to the inscriptional vocabulary, the article also highlights a typology of Buddhist monastic establishments within an eastern Indian sector and a range of devotional activities open to donors to acquire religious merit at these centres.