The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia: Second Edition

Kings and Cosmology

82 part ii of a Buddha relic in the fourteenth century at Wat Phra That located atop Suthep Mountain overlooking the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Kings and Cosmology Theravada Buddhism influenced the classical conception of kingship in various ways. One was the example of King Asoka valorized as the paradigmatic dhammaraja, the righteous monarch who, although a powerful world ruler (cakkavattin), governs justly and righteously as the embodiment of the ten royal virtues. According to the Theravada chronicles of Southeast Asia, successful rulers—at least in the eyes of those who composed the chronicles —were those who emulated King Asoka. This suggests that the Asokan model had a mimetic potency: to imitate King Asoka legitimated a ruler as a dhammaraja. In particular, Buddhist monarchs built Buddhist edifices, especially stupas, and purified the dhamma and the sangha in self-conscious imitation of King Asoka. By such mimetic repetition, peace and prosperity would be guaranteed in the realm and enable the king to rule as a universal monarch (cakkavattin). Theravada Buddhism informed the classical conception of Southeast Asian kingship in other ways. In his study of Burmese kingship during the Pagan period, Michael Aung-Thwin cites three essential elements in the ideology of classical kingship—the dhammaraja, the kammaraja, and the devaraja. He identifies these elements as human, superhuman, and divine attributes of the king: By aiding the public’s desire for salvation and upward spiritual mobility as a bodhisatta; for ruling earthly Tāvati†sa—known as Jambudīpa [generally identified with the Indian subcontinent], paradise on earth—as Sakka [Indra]; and for guarding the supernatural dimensions of society as a nat [Burmese guardian deity]—for these roles the king acquired a divine image. For administering the state efficiently and morally in the tradition of Asoka and the Mahāsammata . . . he acquired the image of a dhammar¡ja. For successfully conquering the buddhism and the state 83 familiar world as a cakkavatti[n], a ‘universal monarch,’ he enjoyed the image of superhuman. Yet, because he achieved all this by the merits derived from his past actions, he was, above all, a kammar¡ja.26 Aung-Thwin’s analysis summarizes several of the Buddhist concepts that informed the political ideology of the classical Buddhist monarchies of Southeast Asia. These concepts were propagated in different ways. For example, kings consulted with the Buddhist sangha, and scholar-monks composed texts that promoted these ideals. Underlying the human, superhuman, and divine dimensions of classical Buddhist political ideology, however, is the notion of mimesis. By imitating Asoka, the ruler actually represents the “great elect” or “world conqueror.” It appears, moreover, that in the construction of palaces, temples, and capitals, as well as the organization of state and society, a similar mimetic principle was operative. That is, these structures and their Figure 2.3. The cetiya (Thai, chedi) at Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai, Thailand. 84 part ii polities were not merely microcosmic symbols of the macrocosmos; by their imitation of the macrocosmos in a virtual reality sense, they embodied the very laws governing the cosmos. My emphasis on the mimetic import of classical Southeast Asian religiopolitical centers is a variation of Robert von Heine-Geldern’s construction of the parallelism between the suprahuman macrocosmos and the human microcosmos in which the kingdom represents the cosmos.27 Heine-Geldern refers to a “magical” relationship between the human realm and the universe , between terrestrial manifestations on the one hand and the points of the compass and the heavens on the other. In this schema everything has a “magical position” and a “magical moment” in the structure and movement of the universe: “Humanity was forever in the control of cosmic forces. This concept was applied to social groups . . . . Kingdom, city, monastery, nothing could prosper unless it was in harmony with these universal forces. In order to achieve this harmony, men tried to build the kingdom, the capital, the palace, the temple, in the form of microcosmos . . . replicas of the structure of the universe.”28 What happens when we apply a mimetic interpretation to three major Southeast Asian religio-political centers: Angkor in Cambodia, Pagan in Burma, and Sukhothai in Siam? These centers and their spectacular monuments represent high points in the development of their respective cultures. They can and should be assessed as expressions of increasingly powerful and centralized states “which [according to Charles Higham] were the foci of intensified centralisation, incorporation of surrounding...