Text
E-book Buddhism in Central Asia I : Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage
The present volume is the proceedings of the start-up conference “Establishing of Buddhist Nodes in Eastern Central Asia 6th to 14th C. Part I: Sacred Space, Pilgrimage, Patronage, Legitimation Strategies” of the BuddhistRoad project, which was held at Ruhr-Universität Bochum on 23–25 May, 2018.1 The themes chosen for this volume are similar to those that constitute the research clusters of the BuddhistRoad project, and are thus part of an attempt at encompassing the salient and observable features that manifested in the Buddhist centres along the networks of the Silk Road and beyond.2 At the same time, these themes reflect the research interests and competences of the project’s partici-pants. It goes without saying that a volume such as the present one cannot cover all relevant topics pertaining to Silk Road studies. The present volume is not intended to do so. Nor does this collection of articles deal with all of the many linguistic fields of Central Asia. What we seek to do here is to provide a series of case studies, each of which highlights specific aspects of the history of Buddhism along the Silk Road.Even though there are numerous articles and historical studies on selected aspects of Buddhism at various sites, there is not a single, book-length recent study of Buddhism on the Silk Road in any Western language. Given the great interest that Central Asia has had in scholarly circles for more than a century, one expects that at least one monograph on the region’s most influential and major religion would have been written by now. However, this unfortunate state of affairs underscores the difficulties of coming to terms with the Silk Road and Buddhism in Eastern Central Asia under the cover of a single study. Surely there are enough primary source materials and archaeological data available by now to at least produce an introductory study of Buddhism on the Silk Road, even if it requires a potential author to be able to cover several lin-guistic fields. With this background in mind, the present volume, broadly conceptualised, deals with the construction of power, secular as well as religious, expressed through processes of legitimation, including patronage and donations, the es-tablishment of so-called sacred spaces, and the associated practice of pilgrim-age. However, while the issues of legitimation and patronage play directly into questions of power and its preservation, the issues concerning sacred space and pilgrimage are only related to them in a secondary manner. Politically, le-gitimation strategies involve religious piety, genuine and pretended, a high de-gree of social and cultural positioning, and a seemingly strong desire to present oneself as a paragon of civilising qualities.
Tidak tersedia versi lain