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The Role of Sasana Reform in Burmese History: Economic Dimensions of a Religious Purification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Michael Aung Thwin
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Abstract

Throughout Burmese history people donated money, land, and labor to the sangha in the hope of acquiring merit and ensuring rebirth in a better existence. Each dynasty was confronted with the flow of wealth from state properties and taxable public holdings to tax-free sanghika estates. Since all religious donations were given in perpetuity, and so were cumulative, the pattern had serious economic consequences. It also posed an ideological dilemma for the monarch: while he was supposed to be the major benefactor of the Religion, the state needed these essential resources for its own survival. In order to halt this trend temporarily, or reverse it within the confines of legitimate Buddhist kingship, Burmese kings used sasana reform, a religious ritual for purifying the sangha; sasana reform was structurally related to economic factors. Although this paper is concerned primarily with Burma, evidence is provided to suggest that similar economic pressures may have been responsible for sasana reform in India, Ceylon, and Thailand.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , August 1979 , pp. 671 - 688
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1979

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References

1 See, for example, Bechert, Heinz, “Theravāda Buddhist Sangha: Some General Observations on Historical and Political Factors in its Development,”, JAS 24: 4 (August 1970), 761–78Google Scholar; and more recently, Tambiah, Stanley J., World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand Against a Historical Background (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 163–66Google Scholar; for E., BurmaMendelson's, Michael “Observations on a Tour in the Region of Mount Popa, Central Burma,” France-Asie, 19; (Jan-June 1963), 780–807Google Scholar; Spiro, Melford, Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 378–82Google Scholar; and Mendelson, E. Michael (ed. Ferguson, John P.), Sangha and State in Burma: A Study of Monastic Sectarianism and Leadership (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 50–53.Google Scholar

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3 For a history of these events in English, Harvey's, History of Burma (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1925)Google Scholar is adequate. A more detailed account in Burmese is the Hmanan Yazawindawgyi, 3 vols. (Rangoon: Pyigyimantaing Press, 1967)Google Scholar. Cady's, History of Modern Burma (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1958)Google Scholar deals with the modern period (and Saya San) in some detail. Scott's, James C.The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 99–101Google Scholar et passim presents a brief but succinct account of the socio-economic factors behind the rebellion. For a detailed account of the cycle in the Pagan period itself, see ch. iv and the conclusion of my dissertation, “The Nature of State and Society in Pagan: An Institutional History of 12th and 13th Century Burma,” The University of Michigan 1976.

4 For the Pagan period, see Aung Thwin, “The Nature of State and Society”; for later periods, such as the 16th and 17th centuries, see Victor Lieberman's dissertation, “The Burmese Dynastic Pattern, Circa 1590–1760: An Administrative and Political Study of the Taung-Ngu Dynasty and the Reign of Alaung-Hpaya,” University of London 1976. For the 18th and 19th centuries, see Daw Mya Sein's Administration of Burma (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973)Google Scholar and Harvey's History of Burma, especially the appendixes. For the past year I have been doing research on just this question of institutional continuity and the data I have gathered, primarily from indigenous sources —inscriptions, chronicles, and revenue records— confirms my contention.

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10 Aung Thwin, “The Nature of State and Society,” ch. i.

11 “Aung Thwin, “The Nature of State and Society,” pp. 49–5 1.

12 Aung Thwin, “The Nature of State and Society,” ch. ii.

13 I gathered most of my data from several volumes of Burmese inscriptions. For a detailed annotated account, see my dissertation mentioned above, pp. 342–45. I have made a note card for each legible donative inscription that has survived, showing the amount of land and labor given to the sangha. At present, there are approximately 1500–2000 of these, and they suggest strongly that land and labor were donated to the sangha at the same pace they had been in Pagan. For works on the post-Pagan period (a few Pagan inscriptions are included in some of them), see the following collections by the Burma Home Department: Inscriptions collected in Upper Burma, 2 vols. (Rangoon: Supt. Govt. Print., 1900, 1903)Google Scholar; Inscriptions copied from the stones collected by King Bodawpaya and placed near the Arakan Pagoda, Mandalay, 2 vols. (Rangoon: Supt. Govt. Print., 1897)Google Scholar; Inscriptions of Pagan, Pinya, and Ava (in the Burmese text) as deciphered from the ink impressions found among the papers of the late Dr. E. Forchhammer (and edited by Taw Sein Ko), 2 vols. (Rangoon: Supt. Govt. Print., 1892, 1899)Google Scholar; Original inscriptions collected by King Bodawpaya in Upper Burma and now placed near the Patodawgyi Pagoda, Amarapura (Rangoon: Supt. Govt: Print., 1913).Google Scholar

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15 I must thank my colleague, the excellent historian of Burma, Dr. Victor Lieberman of SOAS, for posing this important question and independently arriving at some of the same answers. For general works on Tibetan society, see Carrasco, Pedro, Land and Polity in Tibet (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1949)Google Scholar, ch. iii; and. Richardson's, H. E.Tibet and Its History (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), ch. ii.Google Scholar

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21 Aung Thwin, “The Nature of State and Society,”p. 266.

22 See Tambiah, pp. 162–63.

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31 In a forthcoming paper, “Prophecies, Omens, and Dialogue: Tools of the Trade in Burmese Historiography,” I discuss the use of literary conventions to convey unwritten meanings in traditional Burmese historical writing.

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