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The Buddhist Conception of Kingship and Its Historical Manifestations: A Reply to Spiro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

S. J. Tambiah
S. J. Tambiah
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Abstract

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Type
Correspondence
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , August 1978 , pp. 801 - 809
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1978

References

1 The relevant writings of these authors are cited in my book, except Coomaraswamy, Ananda. Spintual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government, (New Haven: American Oriental Series [22], 1942).Google Scholar

2 See Geiger, Wilhelm, Pali Literature and Language, Authorized English Trans, by Ghosh, B., (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1956), pp. 9–13.Google Scholar

3 Weber, Max, The Religion of India (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1958), pp. 206, 237–238.Google Scholar

4 Ghoshal, U. N., A History of Indian Political Ideas (Bombay: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), Chapter IVGoogle Scholar; another example is Basham, A. L., The Wonder that was India (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1954), pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

5 Dumont, Louis, “The conception of kingship in Ancient India,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, V (1961).Google Scholar

6 See WC, pp. 93–95; and Lingat, R., The Classical Law of India (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), p. 267Google Scholar; “Evolution of the Conception of Law in Burma and Siam,” Journal of the Siam Society XXXVIII (1950).Google Scholar

7 Nīti-Nighanduwa or the Vocabulary of Law as it Existed in the Days of the Kandyan Kingdom, trans, by C. J. R. LeMesurier and T. B. Panabokke, 1880.

8 Pieris, Ralph, Sinhalese Social Organization, The Kandyan Period (Colombo: Ceylon Univ. Press, 1956), p. 180.Google Scholar

9 Spiro uses the word “myth” in a deprecatory and dismissive sense, since myth is seen as incapable of contributing to a conception of kingship. Spiro is entitled to hold his impoverished notions of myth, but the point is that the texts Spiro labels “myth ” are not so labelled by the canon, and are equally canonical as any other sutta, and by no means unique in having legendary and cosmological features. It is the anthropologist's business first and foremost to try and understand how such canonical materials were understood and acted upon by Buddhists, not to arbitrarily impose labels.

Further, I cannot suppress the temptation to remark that after all the Oedipus story is also only one myth, yet a myth reiterated in many versions, and while being only a myth it has had important significance in Western civilization, not the least important of which is its place in Freudian theory, which Spiro accepts as a “science ” and whose “application ” cross-culturally he considers his avowed mission.

10 Again, I shall give the references in my longer essay.

11 See Bareau, André, “The Superhuman Per- sonality of the Buddha and its Symbolism in the Mahāparinirvānasūtra of the Dharmaguptaka” in Myth and Symbols, ed. Kitagawa, J. M. and Long, C. H. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971).Google Scholar

12 Edmund Leach's review of WC in The Times Literary Supplement, 14 Jan. 1977.

13 See WC, pp. 52–53 and pp. 93–95. One may also add to this the lack of comprehensive lay social codes that are directly derived from the canonical doctrines, a point on which I agree with Max Weber. But note that kings attempted to find legitimacy for the codes in the canon, as for example, Rama I when he ordered a revised compilation of the Siamese Law Code (WC, p. 187). In addition to my citation of Bechert regarding the use of Kautilya's Arthaśāstra (or some version of it) for the instruction of princes in Sri Lanka and Burma, additional confirmation is to be found for Sri Lanka in Geiger, W., Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1960), p. 119Google Scholar, and for Ayutthaya of the fifteenth century in Kasetsiri, Charnvit, The Rise of Ayudhya (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976).Google Scholar

14 Thus Rabibhadana, Akin (Change and Persistence in Thai Society, ed. Skinner, G. W. and Kirsch, A. T. [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975], P. 103)Google Scholar writes of the Bangkok period that “Thai kingship was sacred because it represented the dharma, the moral order of society ” and develops why it was believed that in the Thai king inhered infinite bun (merit) and infinite sak (power, energy). ” Similarly Michael AungThwin (Explorations in Early Buddhist Asian History: The Origins of Southeast Asian Statecraft, ed. Hall, Kenneth R. and Whitmore, John K. [Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, No. 11, 1976]Google Scholar) says of the Pagan King that he was “the person who had most merit to share with everyone, ” a characterization that links up with the king's claim to be a bod-hisatta.

Keyes, C. F. in “Millenialism, Theravāda Buddhism, and Thai Society,” JAS, xxxvi (1977)Google Scholar, also refers to the idea that the king is the most meritorious person in the kingdom, an idea that persists to this day.

15 Sarkisyanz, E., Buddhist Backgrounds to the Burmese Revolution (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1965), Chapter xv.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 That is, from the eleventh century onwards.

17 History of Ceylon, ed. in charge, Ray, H. C., Vol. 1, Part 11 (Colombo: Ceylon University Press 1960), p. 57.Google Scholar For fuller evidence see Epigraphia Zeylanica II and III.

18 Historical cakhavatti kings also defended their attacks on neighboring kings as acts of dharma-vijaya, the Asokan concept of non-violent conquest by dharma which they reinterpreted as acts of warlike conquest to defend and preserve Buddhism. Aniruddha of Pagan justified his famous attack on Thaton as dharma vijaya. In this guise the concept of dharma-vijaya bears some resemblance to the Islamic notion of “holy war. ”

19 There exists a French translation of this work: Coedès, G. and Archaimbault, C., Les Trots Mondes, Vol. LXXXIX, Publications de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient, Paris, 1973.Google Scholar An English translation by Frank and Mani Reynolds titled The Three Worlds of Phrā Ruang is in press, and I have consulted it.

20 This appellation is foreshadowed in the Divyāvadāna (one of the earliest non-canonical works, composed in “hybrid Sanskrit ”) which refers to Asoka as bālacakravartirājya. I am grateful to Professor Nagatomi for this reference.

21 Mahāpurisa is “great man. ”

22 For discussions of how this prophecy has taken root in Burmese popular thought and action (including its relevance for the Saya San rebellion in the 1930s) see Mendelson, E. M., “A Messianic Buddhist Association in Upper Burma,” Bulletin of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, XXIV (3, 1961)Google Scholar; and “Observations on a Tour in the Region of Mount Popa, Central Burma, ” France-Asie Extrait du No. 179 (1963); also see on Burma Sarkisyanz, n. 15 above, Chapter xv.

Concerning the millenarian implications of Met-teya's coming for Sri Lanka, see Malalgoda, Kitsiri, “Millenialism in Relation to Buddhism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History XII (4, 1970).Google Scholar

For Thailand, see C. F. Keyes' informative essay “Millenialism, Theravada Buddhism … ” n. 14 above, especially on the millenial uprising in the Northeast at the turn of this century.

23 See Conze, Edward, Buddhist Thought in In- dia (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1970), pp. 24–25Google Scholar, for Buddhist doctrines on degrees of reality and hierarchy of beings.

24 See Wilhelm Geiger, Culture of Ceylon in Medieval Times, n. 13 above, pp. 113–114, on the preoccupations of the Sinhalese royalty of medie- val times with auspicious markings. One illustrious example was the bodily marks on a princess who it was prophesied would give birth to a mighty ruler over the whole of Jambudvīpa; she was the mother of Parakrama Bāhu I, the most illustrious of the Polonnaruva kings.

25 See Spiro, Melford E., Buddhism and Society (New York: Harper&Row, 1970), pp. 288Google Scholar, for an expression of this attitude.

26 Spiro, Melford E., Burmese Supernaturalism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentic e-Hall, 1967), pp. 250, 257.Google Scholar

27 Buddhism and Society, n. 25 above, p. 253.

28 Ibid., p. 338.

29 Ibid., p. 342.