lec 2 rajamandala & buddhification Flashcards
world economic systems are engaged in 2 things:
trade and cultural exchanges
why is the indian ocean region in this period different from modern concepts of world economies/globalikzation?
bc these concepts are informed by colonial legacies, yet at this point the region had no contact w colonial worldviews
geography is shaped by…
sociocultural concepts
Kandy defended themselves from european colonization in 4 ways:
- superior understanding of the land
- diplomacy
- guerilla warfare tactics
- seasonal flooding
in the last 200 years the state has been understood to be: (2)
- a political, geographical entity
- A top down hierarchical form of power, with sovereignty vested in highest authority
a state possesses 5 big things:
- a govt that makes decisions about right & wrong
- territory and borders defining inside/outside
- formal citizenship defining insiders/outsiders
- belief that borders approximate a nation
- military that protects from outsiders
Modern nation states are generally assumed to be natural but in reality…
have a history that emerges from the period of colonization
the concept of church vs state and their separation arises from…
a particular european problem that doesn’t have historical grounding in other parts of the world
The idea of church and state relies on an assumption of conflict between…
spiritual and political/territorial realism
“rajamandala” is a term that refers to
A form of spatial organization indigenous to south and southeast asia developing from hindu/buddhist political theory
in rajamandala, the king’s authority comes from [1] as the [2] and [3]
- dharma/moral law
- chakravartin/universal emperor
- boddhivista
define boddhivista:
a person who has attained all the knowledge necessary in order to escape the cycle, but has chosen to stay in a mortal form in order to help others achieve spiritual perfection
in the rajamandala system, the division betweem cosmology and material realms..
does not exist
tambiah is arguing against 3 main things:
- Classical anthropological explanations that mythologizes indigenous cosmo-political orders
- Romanticization of indigenous political orders
- Western tendency to over-emphasizes the top-down state structure and economic determinism
galactic sovereignty has no separation of (3)
economy/territory/spirituality
what does tambiah mean by “totality”?
lack of separation of economy/territory/spirituality and where no one is considered more important than another
within rajamandala, the [1] is more important that the integrity of the temporal agent, therefore [2] is not a contradicition of the divine right of kings:
- integrity of the structure
- perennial rebellion and conflict
[1] was essential to actualizing rajamandala
ceremony
[1] was essential to keeping the rajamandala system balanced
dharma
within the kandyan political economy, the [1] was the main scale of political economy
village
define rajakariya:
kingservice, or obligatory work to the king/state that was beneficial for everyone
there were 4 types of villages, depending on who their service/taxes were directed toward:
- free
- royal
- aristocratic
- temple
authority to rule kandy was based on…
performing scared/material duties in tandem
the galactic system regularly incirporated [1], bc there was no notion of [2] in the way we understand it now
- outsiders
- nationalism/ethnicity
in 1739 Sri Vijaya Rajasinha became the first of the…
nayakkar dynasty
the asala perahera was an important cermony that included the [1] and reinfocred the [2]
- dalada/tooth relic
- king’s function as bodhisattva
