Who Is Legitimating Whom? On Justifying Buddhism’s Place in the Body Politic

Abstract

In this chapter I revisit the idea of legitimacy and question whether or not it is really a useful concept. Insofar as possible, I take a broad look across East Asian states in order to see how well the concept can be applied across various times and dynasties. However, for practical reasons I restrict myself mostly to medieval China and medieval Korea (Koryŏ (918–1392, 高麗國)), the areas I am most familiar with. Following the publication of The Power of the Buddhas,1 there have not been many studies that attempt a conceptual analysis of power relations between the state and religious communities in pre-modern East Asian (or Central Asian) societies.2 Valuable work has, of course, been done, and I will turn to some of it later. However, what strikes me is that the most innovative research in terms of Buddhism’s working at the level of the seats of power, has been done in the fields of art and archeology—or perhaps better, the material culture of Buddhism. I refer especially to the richly challenging work by Eugene Wang, as well as the many studies of relics, dhāraṇīs, and other material remnants, tangible reminders of what has been termed ‘Buddhist on the ground’ (or perhaps ‘in the ground’). Of course, texts are ultimately also material, but they have been largely treated in a disembodied way, as ideas rather than practices. Thus, we seem to