The Promise of Precedent: Magadha, Laṅkā, and Bago by Dr. Anne Blackburn

The Promise of Precedent: Magadha, Laṅkā, and Bago by Dr. Anne Blackburn

Part of the international workshop ‘The Politics and Pathways of Return: Trans-Regional Perspectives on a Buddhist Homeland’

Abstract

The Kalyāṇi Inscriptions composed in 1470s Bago (Burma Delta region) for the court of King Dhammazedi reveal the ways in which imagined geographies of Buddha-sāsana were drawn into premodern local royal and monastic practice outside the Indian subcontinent.  We see that Magadha and Laṅkā both figure in the “Buddhist technologies of statecraft” utilized at Bago. How should we understand Dhammazedi’s emphasis on a doubled inheritance, from both Laṅkā and the Indian subcontinent? On behalf of what kinds of Buddhist collectives did the king evoke the authority of Gotama Buddha’s subcontinental arena, as well as ideas of Buddhist kingship?

Bio

Anne Blackburn was first drawn to the study of Buddhism at Swarthmore College thanks to Donald Swearer, a scholar of Northern Thai Buddhism who developed innovative analytical perspectives on Buddhist history working across the domains of Thai Buddhist historiography, politics, Buddhist material culture, and Buddha biography. She received further training as an historian of religions at the University of Chicago, mentored by Frank Reynolds in a program shaped by historical sociology and hermeneutics. Her secondary supervisor at Chicago, Steven Collins, conducted research in Buddhist Studies and South Asian Studies, working with great orginality at the intersection of historical sociology, philosophy, and the study of Buddhist literature in Pali. Studying with Charles Hallisey and P.B. Meegaskumbura introduced Blackburn to the rich history of Sinhala Buddhist literature and historiography, as well as approaches to South Asian literary vernaculars. In her research, Anne Blackburn works at the intersection of Buddhist institutional history, political economy, intellectual history, and literature. She focuses on intellectual-political centers in what is now Sri Lanka (formerly Lanka) during the 2nd millennium A.D., and networked nodes across the Indian Ocean in what are now Burma and Thailand.

This event is co-sponsored by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), The Robin H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhism and Contemporary Society, and the Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR).