Writing Buddhist Histories from Landscape and Architecture - Sukhothai and Ciang Mai(1).pdf - buddhist study review 2007 - 02 - abhidhamma

Buddhist Studies Review 24(2) 2007, 192–225

ISSN (print): 0256-2897

doi: 10.1558/bsrv.v24i1.192

ISSN (online): 1747-9681

Writing Buddhist Histories from Landscape and

Architecture: Sukhothai and Chiang Mai 1

Anne M. Blackburn

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

ABSTRACT: This essay oﬀ ers a preliminary account of the ways in which alterations

to the landscape of fourteenth- and ﬁ fteenth-century Sukhothai and Chiang Mai ﬁ g-

ured within the micro-politics of these city-states. I show how landscape alterations

inspired by Laṅkā and mainland South Asia served the consolidation and projection of

royal power within the context of local and regional competition, and how such alter-

ations formed part of strategic royal engagement with Buddhist monastic lineages.

INTRODUCTION

Historical narratives and lineage texts produced in Sri Lanka and mainland

Southeast Asia often include accounts of the alteration of landscape 2 by Buddhist

1. This essay is dedicated to Donald K. Swearer with great respect, gratitude, and aﬀ ection. An

early version of this essay was read at the 9th International Conference on Thai Studies (at

DeKalb, Illinois, 2005) for a panel in celebration of Professor Swearer’s many contributions to

Buddhist Studies and Thai Studies. I am grateful for questions and comments on that version,

especially those oﬀ ered by Professor Swearer himself. My ﬁ rst attempt to explore the histori-

cal and hermeneutical problems raised by the study of spatial copying and the constitution

of landscape occurred with students at Cornell University in a seminar titled ‘Monks, Texts,

and Relics: Transnational Buddhism in Asia’. I would like to thank Bryce Beemer and Christian

Lammerts for their thoughtful contributions to our work, and Lawrence Chua and Jonathan

Young for later stimulating conversations on related topics. A revised version of the essay was

read to the UK Association of Buddhist Studies conference held at Lancaster University in July

2006. I am particularly grateful to Ashley Thompson, Ian Reader, and Peter Skilling for their

comments on that occasion. Subsequently, I have greatly bene ﬁ ted from comments and refer-

ences oﬀ ered by Peter Harvey, Justin McDaniel, Stanley O’Connor, and the anonymous reader

for Buddhist Studies Review.

2. Susan Alcock writes of the term ‘landscape’: ‘Landscape, a capacious and currently much uti-

lized concept, contains a multitude of meanings, all of which revolve around human expe-

rience, perception, and modi ﬁ cation of the world. Landscape thus embraces the physical

environment, patterns of settlement, boundaries and frontier, ﬁ elds, cities, natural features,

monuments, pathways, holy places, wilderness, and much much more’ (2002, 30). In this essay

I am most concerned with sites associated with protective supernatural powers, and sites that

served as foci for remembrance of Sakyamuni Buddha and powerful rulers.

BLACKBURN BUDDHIST HISTORIES FROM LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

193

patrons. That is, such texts include reports of meritorious activity in the form

of building construction and the establishment of sites for the recollection of

Sakyamuni Buddha and other enlightened beings. Such reconstitutions of the

landscape are, in particular, evoked and described in reports of kingship. Thus,

for example, the Mahāvaṃsa reports of King Duṭṭhagāmaṇi:

Spending a hundred thousand (pieces of money) the king hereupon com-

manded a great and splendid ceremony of gifts for the great Bodhi-tree.

As he then, when entering the city, saw the pillar of stone raised upon

the place of the (future) thūpa and remembered the old tradition, he

became glad, thinking; ‘I will build the Great Thūpa. … When the where-

withal to build was thus brought together he began the work of the Great

Thūpa on the full-moon day of the month Vesākha, when the Visākha-

constellation had appeared. … When the king, glad at heart, had thus

had preparation made upon the spot where the Great Thūpa was to be

built, he arranged on the fourteenth day of the bright half of the month

Āsāḷha, an assembly of the brotherhood of the bhikkhus, and spoke thus:

‘To-morrow, venerable sirs, I shall lay the foundation-stone of the Great

Cetiya. Then let our whole brotherhood assemble here, to the end that

a festival may be held for the Buddha …

(Geiger 1950, 28:1–3, 29:1–2, 13–16)

So, too, the Jinakālamālī celebrates some of the actions of King Tilokarāja 3 as

follows:

The Emperor Tilaka, the Universal Monarch Siridhamma, for the sake of

his parents’ gaining substantial merit had an Uposatha-hall constructed

at the place of cremation of the remains of his mother and father at the

Great Rattavana Monastery. On the Great Invitation day of the follow-

ing year, the year of the Monkey of the Royal Saka Era, the Sovereign

Lord Tilaka measured out a region of twenty fathoms on all sides of the

Uposatha-hall … . When the formal act of the Order of Agreement on a

Sīmā was over, for seven days, the righteous monarch conducted a mag-

ni ﬁ cent ceremony of dedication.

(Jayawickrama 1968, 137–8)

Such textual references strongly suggest that we should see the Buddhist

worlds of South and Southeast Asia as participating within a ‘cultural system

of using buildings and statues to signal approbation and power’ (Elsner 2003,

219). 4 Historians of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia have long recognized

the importance of such merit-making and patronage to Buddhist kingship and

elite politics. However, we have not yet assessed such acts of construction as

elements in arguments developed geographically in response to micro-political

demands. We have not, in other words, yet adequately explored the ways in which

3. See the end of this article for a list of Thai kings and their dates.

4. Elsner writes of the Roman world.

194

BUDDHIST STUDIES REVIEW

the construction and reconstruction of buildings for Buddhist activities, and the

delineation of landscape sites for ritual and pilgrimage, formed part of speci ﬁ c

local eﬀ orts to consolidate and articulate lineage and power. 5 In this essay I hope

to oﬀ er a preliminary account of some of the ways in which alterations to the

landscape of Buddhist practice in Sukhothai and Chiang Mai 6 occurred within the

context of the micro-politics of these city-states, and eﬀ orts to alter or aﬃ rm local

and regional hierarchies of status, authority and potency. Such eﬀ orts assumed

several simultaneous functions of space and site that present-day scholars of

Buddhism might be inclined to distinguish (given our own taxonomies), namely:

(1) the samsaric protection oﬀ ered by landscape alteration as merit-making; (2)

the immediate potent (or ‘magical’) protection provided by marking and enhanc-

ing certain sites; (3) the demonstration of power and authority through massive

visual signs of patronage and the reorientation of spaces for ritual practice; (4) the

alteration of the hierarchy of monastic lineage controlled by a king through the

enhancement of sites related to one line and the diminution or neglect of those

related to another; (5) the ‘citation’ 7 of claims to participate in the unfolding of

a speci ﬁ c local history of the sāsana. By ‘citation’ I refer to the manner in which

the material forms instantiated through architecture and landscape alterations

help to shape, and then to support, oral and textual claims made to lineage and

inheritance, as well as claims of supersession and encompassment.

Examining two instances of altered landscape (in the area we know as Thailand)

during the fourteenth and ﬁ fteenth centuries, I show how these interventions,

which drew inspiration from elements of Buddhist landscape in Laṅkā 8 and main-

land South Asia, served the consolidation and projection of royal power, royal

engagement with competing Buddhist monastic lines, and the protection of

Buddhist persons. I look at the reconstitution of Buddhist landscapes in Sukhothai

5. The most substantial contribution in this regard is Duncan (1990), which I discuss in the con-

cluding section of this essay.

6. I have developed this essay without independent access to materials in Thai, Northern Thai

and Khmer and the essay is thus greatly dependent on translated materials and secondary

scholarship on Chiang Mai and Sukhothai. I look to colleagues working more centrally in the

local histories of Southeast Asian Buddhism for further re ﬁ nements and corrections.

7. This term was suggested to me by Ashley Thompson (personal communication), in a slightly

diﬀ erent context. I ﬁ nd it a richly suggestive term with which to think about the power of

material forms to make, or to participate in, narrative arguments about temporality and

belonging. An examination of the place of material forms in such arguments made within the

Buddhist worlds of South and Southeast Asia could fruitfully include study of the micro-politics

involved in selecting and establishing copies of powerful images, in addition to the already well

discussed traﬃ c in the theft of relics and royal palladia. On image copies, see the important and

suggestive work of A. B. Griswold (1957; 1965). Justin McDaniel rightly notes, in his thoughtful

treatment of the Jinakālamālī , that Lān Nā chronicles such as the Jinakālamālī work to establish

‘temporal and spatial authenticity’ for Lanna through the use of ‘spatial terminology and the

establishment of sacred geography in their histories’ (2002, esp. 161, 168). In this regard see

also McDaniel (2000).

8. I use the term ‘Laṅkā’ to refer to the island we now know as Sri Lanka in the period before

1948.

BLACKBURN BUDDHIST HISTORIES FROM LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

195

and Chiang Mai as activities that were, for royal patrons, part of ‘building a world’ 9

in their present, and for their samsaric futures. In what follows here I focus on the

immediate context for patronage, construction and landscape alteration rather

than the reception accorded to such changes. However, I certainly do not assume

that the patron’s vision of his or her altered landscape (its aims, its eﬀ ects) was

something received with uniformity. There would have been, presumably, a range

of responses, aﬀ ected by very personal experiences as well as by social location.

THE BUDDHA’S FOOTPRINTS AT SUKHOTHAI

Territory and Power

According to Betty Gosling, King Lü Thai or Mahā Dhammarāja I (r. 1347–?) 10 com-

missioned four engravings of the Buddha’s footprint in the 1350s and had them

placed on hilltops at Nakhon Sawān (Braḥ Pāṅ), Bang Phān (Pāṅ Bān), Si Sajjanalai,

and Sukothai (1991, 70-71). 11 Her claim ﬁ nds support in Sukhothai Inscription 3

(in Thai), which lists a series of footprint installations in Sukhothai, Si Sajjanalai,

Pāṅ Bān, and Pāk Braḥ Pāṅ, and emphasizes that ‘[t]there is an inscription with

(the footprint) at each of those places’ (Griswold & Prasert 1992, 464). According

to this inscription, which accompanied the enshrinement of a relic at Nagara Juṃ,

each of the footprint installations was placed at the top of a hill or mountain. 12

The footprints are explicitly associated with Laṅkā:

Brañā Dharmikarāja sent to Siṅhala to make impressions of the trace of …

Our Lord’s Foot which is stamped on top of Mount Sumanakūṭaparvata,

to measure its size, and to bring (the impressions) back to be copied for

everyone …

(465, original parentheses)

This refers to the Lankan site of Śrī Pāda, or Adam’s Peak, located in the south-

central region of Laṅkā, long understood by Asian Buddhists to be one of the

locations on which Sakyamuni Buddha reached, and marked, the island we now

know as Sri Lanka.

The content of this inscription suggests that the installation of Buddha foot-

prints on these sites served as an opportunity for the articulation of royal author-

ity (real or desired) in relation to competition from other müang (city-state)

centres. Reference to the Buddha footprint installations follows words of praise

for the king and a condensed account of his expectations regarding proper king-

ship, succession and inheritance for men of rank as well as commoners:

9. The words are Stanley O’Connor’s, in a lecture addressed to the Southeast Asia Program at

Cornell University, 2 September 2004.

10. See further below regarding these regnal dates.

11. See also Griswold (n.d., 55–8).

12. Griswold & Prasert date the inscription to 1357 (1992, 433).

196

BUDDHIST STUDIES REVIEW

* Wat Saphan Hin

* Ram Khamhäng’s

MangoGrove

* Mahā Dhammarāja I’s

Royal Mango

* Wat

GroveMonastery

Mahāthāt. Royal Palace

* Brahminic Shrine

* Mahā Dhammarāja I’s

SukhothaiFootprint

MAP 1: Sukhothai sites 13

From now on if any ruler … in this city he must do what is right … [he

must do homage to] stupas, cetiyas and śrīmahābodhi trees [along the

banks of] this River Biṅ without missing a single time; he must respect

the monks, [honor his parents, love his elder and] younger brothers, and

respect the aged. He must be kind to the common people; [if they are

strong enough to perform a certain] task, he may use them for it, but if

they are not strong enough he must not use them, [and those who are

too old should be allowed to do as they please]. He must (keep) reserves

of rice and an abundance of salt in his Möaṅ; if [he does so] … [the rul-

ers of] other countries will come to rely and lean upon him; but if [he

does not], he himself (may have to) seek help from the countries of other

rulers, who will treat him with contempt and … him besides. When com-

moners or men of rank [die] … he must not seize their estates; when a

father dies (the estate) must be left [*to the sons; when an elder brother

dies, it must be left to] the younger. Any ruler who acts in accordance

with these principles … will rule this Moaṅ for a very long time; any

(ruler) who acts in violation of them will not last long at all.

This statement is rather brief but there is a detailed statement in an

inscription at Sukhodaya … at the Mahādhātu, …

(Griswold & Prasert 1992, 463–4, original punctuation)

The location of the footprint installations described by Inscription 3 suggests

that the footprints, and their inscriptional accompaniments, served as a means

through which Mahā Dharmarāja I made claims to royal authority at Sukhothai

and over territories beyond the müang . In addition to the footprint established in

Sukhothai, the inscription refers to Si Sajjanalai, a city-polity sometimes linked

13. Adapted from Gosling (1996, 75; 1991, rear inset); not to scale.

Writing Buddhist Histories from Landscape and Architecture - Sukhothai and Ciang Mai(1).pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: