Institutions

·期刊原文
Efforts, especially of studies of precolonial "institutions," to
determine religious "orthodoxy" in textually based belief systems
such as Theravada Buddhism too frequently misconstrue emphases of
earlier or later stages of the development of the religion as
constants. Prevalent historiography on Burma (a Theravada Buddhist
society), for example, frequently misconstrues Theravada Buddhism as
a static set of beliefs, with a similarly undynamic symbolic
representation of those beliefs in religious iconography, social
institutions, and the notion of kingship. Fortunately, Holt, whose
work focuses on Sri Lanka, studiously avoids this problem in The
Religious World of Kirti Sri. Holt locks into a "moment" in
Sinhalese Theravada Buddhism, the reign of Kirti Sri (r. 1751-82
C.E.) of the kingdom of Kandy in the central area of the island of
Sri Lanka, in an attempt to determine what it meant to be a
Theravada Buddhist during this particular reign and what the classic
Sinhala Buddhist Weltanschauung was.
Holt suggests that the chief motivation of Kirti Sri's religious
program was an effort to deny his internal opponents, the Sinhalese
Buddhist nobility, the opportunity to appeal to the popular masses,
on the grounds of Theravada Buddhist orthodoxy, to overthrow him, as
he was the successor to a foreign and Hindu dynastic line. To
achieve this goal, Kirti Sri had "to express the fundamentals of a
religious world view in a manner that was clearly accessible and
intelligible to the masses of lay Buddhists, his most important
constituency" (p. 42). As Holt explains, Kirti Sri generally
attempted to portray himself in the religious art and symbolism of
his reign in a manner consistent with the ideal image of Buddhist
kingship. Fortunately, Holt does not leave the reader uninformed by
simple references to "Theravada Buddhist orthodoxy" or other often
undefined (and equally not understood) labels, and instead spends
much of his book on an in-depth analysis indicating just how
religious orthodoxy was revealed in the religious art, ritual, myth,
and symbolism of Kirti Sri's reign.
An important contribution of Holt's work is his careful examination
of the chief elements of religious orthodoxy in the reign of Kirti
Sri. Holt identifies, for example, five elements of Kirti Sri's
political discourse: Asokan, the Sakran model of divine rule,
Mahasammata Buddhist myth, Manu, and the bodhisatta ideal.
Concerning the visual liturgy of Kirti Sri's religious art, Holt
identifies six chief elements: solosmasthana (sixteen sacred
places), sat sati (seven weeks of meditation after enlightenment),
suvisi vivarana (the twenty-four Buddhas), the thousand Buddha
motif, Buddhacarita (the life of the Buddha), and the Jataka tales.
The targeted audience of this religious symbolism was the popular
masses and, as Holt explains, the Jataka stories concerning the
"bodhisatta-as-king" were the chief "eye-level elements of most
visual liturgies in the temples that he restored" (p. 89). Kirti
Sri, in a manner familiar to historians of precolonial mainland
Southeast Asia, devoted most of his personal resources to support
Buddhism and Buddhist institutions during his reign.
Every study, however, has its weaknesses. Holt fails to examine
directly, for example, the relationship between religion and
ethnicity in this period in Sri Lankan history. Questions of ethnic
identity seemingly plagued Kirti Sri's reign, as the successor to a
Tamil Saivite dynasty which ruled the predominantly Buddhist and
Sinhalese kingdom of Kandy from 1739. Holt provides a chapter on
this subject, but chiefly for a discussion of how this problem
manifests itself in modern Sri Lanka. More useful would have been a
detailed discussion of how religious identity weighed as a construct
of ethnic identity in Kirti Sri's Kandyan realm. When considered
against this work's other contributions, however, this weakness does
not weigh heavily.
The Religious World of Kirti Sri is a well-conceived and carefully
executed study of a program of religious legitimation of kingship in
one reign. As such, Holt's work holds considerable comparative value
for historians not only of precolonial Sri Lanka, but also of other
early modern Theravada Buddhist societies, such as Burma, Rakhine,
Cambodia, and Ayudhya.
MICHAEL W. CHARNEY UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN