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Description of  Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean: The Pali Arena, 1200 1550 (New Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory)

082489488X pdf Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean draws attention to the varied, historically contingent, and sometimes competing, arguments for and about sovereignty that operated in the Pali arena during the first half of the second millennium AD. It was a time of expanding interaction within the Indian Ocean just prior to Portuguese colonial presence in Southern Asia. Developing a linked series of case studies and examining territories now subsumed within the nation-states of Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar, and Thailand, Blackburn examines sovereign arguments expressed textually, as well as in the built environment, by persons with an interest in the teachings and institutions associated with Gotama Buddha. These cases show that no single model of Buddhist-inflected sovereignty dominated the Pali arena during this time, and that there was no stable vision of Buddhist kingship. Rather, over time, there was an accrual of possible models and pathways for argumentation about how sovereigns could and should relate to Read more