Unearthly Powers

Strathern, Andrew

doi:10.1017/9781108753371

Cited by 48 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 422 publications

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“…Yet, it also accepts and yields to certain immanentist pulls, for example, by leaving 'the sphere of relations with metapersons to proceed largely as it always did', by promoting, as in the case of Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddha's own deification and the cult of his relics, or as in Tantric Buddhism, where ritualized transgression and inversion become the means of gaining supernatural force, albeit under the umbrella of a transcendentalist and profoundly intellectualized rationale. 10 This conceptual division between transcendentalist and immanentist tendencies is furthermore aligned with two distinct modes of sacralizing kingship: the divinized and righteous. Immanentist societies deify kings by considering them as equivalent to gods, whereas in transcendentalist religions, kings are endorsed by a religious hierarchy.…”

Section: Mongol Immanentism Sacral Kingship and Religious Pluralismmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Yet, with its long history as a means of assimilating, accommodating, and replacing pre-Buddhist modes of divinized kingship, in particular in the Tibetan context, 68 utilizing the title for the Chinggisids furthermore entailed a radical 'shift of focus from the ontological status of the king and his ability to capture supernatural power to the question of his moral authority'. 69 As cakravartin, the Chinggisid ruler's fate and rank no longer hinged on his ancestor Chinggis's special connection with Heaven and his inheritance of the Chinggisid suu (the family's special good fortune and charisma), but on the ruler's adherence to Buddhist moral codes and his support of the dharma. 70 Vesting a foreign ruler with the trappings of the cakravartin was conceived as the path to domestication and acculturation, not only the Buddhicization, of unruly conquerors.…”

Section: Buddhist Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Chinggisid pluralism and religious competition: Buddhists, Muslims, and the question of violence and sovereignty in Ilkhanid Iran

Brack¹

2022

Mod. Asian Stud.

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This article argues that the Mongol empire's famous religious tolerance cannot be explained solely through its adoption of Inner Asian imperial political traditions of ruling over ethnically and religiously diverse subjects. Instead, this pluralism can be ascribed to a wider religious pattern of the Mongols. The first part argues that the analytical category of immanentist religions explains not only the inter-cultic transparency exhibited by the Mongol courts, but also the few explicit instances where the Chinggisid rulers reacted with ‘religious’ violence. The article further explores the strategies employed by the religious vectors, mainly Buddhists and Muslims, to address, accommodate, and subvert the Chinggisids’ patterns of religiosity and primarily their pluralism, and the Mongols’ deified mode of sacralizing kingship. Focusing on the Mongol-Ilkhanid court in Iran, the article examines how religious representatives used conceptual affinities and equivalences between the Mongol traditions and certain principles of their own religious frameworks to gain influence and favour, and persuade the khans to convert or retain their earlier commitment to the new religious affiliation. Employing this assimilative approach, they manoeuvred within the religious, immanentist paradigm of their nomadic patrons while moulding and manipulating it to their own religious, transcendentalist ends. The article further demonstrates how this ‘translation’ process of Chinggisid patterns became an arena of Buddhist–Muslim rivalry and competition, but also cross-cultural fertilization.

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Section: Mongol Immanentism Sacral Kingship and Religious Pluralismmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Buddhist Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%