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DC Field | Value | Language |
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dc.contributor.advisor | Sivaraman, K. | en_US |
dc.contributor.advisor | Younger, P. | en_US |
dc.contributor.author | Carment, David B. | en_US |
dc.date.accessioned | 2014-06-18T17:01:52Z | - |
dc.date.available | 2014-06-18T17:01:52Z | - |
dc.date.created | 2013-06-06 | en_US |
dc.date.issued | 1985-06 | en_US |
dc.identifier.other | opendissertations/7836 | en_US |
dc.identifier.other | 8931 | en_US |
dc.identifier.other | 4202731 | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/12999 | - |
dc.description.abstract | <p>The two most important ordering principles for human society are the political and the religious. In some way, the history of a society might be viewed as the process with which a community attempts to affirm, through religious oncf political structures and values, the legitimation of its power and authority. Successive efforts to weave new patterns of legitimation might then be thought to define the process of change in that society. As traditional forms of society succumb to new means of ordering reality the changes that come about raise the question: What happens to a community's ordering of reality when it attempts to redefine its political legitimizing process in terms of its religious orientation? The purpose of this thesis is to examine this question in the related societies of South India and Sri Lanka.</p> <p>The process transforming society is not a simple evolution of new ideas and the breakdown of older ideas. Instead the process is more likely a dialectic of critical thought in which a common horizontal thread (politicoreligious man) entwines with a series of vertical threads linking that society with its past traditions. The vertical threads are those by which a society establishes the relation of its system of thought to previous expression in the same branch of cultural activity (religion, politics, philosophy). By the horizontal thread a society critically assesses its legitimizing values in terms of what is appearing in other branches of cultural activity and in terms of values in other societies. South India and Sri Lanka stand out in the deqree to which they exemplify this historical process of shaping and transforming the mechanisms of the social order. The lattcer religious tradition, as it is expressed in the historiography of the chronicles, the Dῑpavamsa, the Mahᾱvamsa and the Cῡlavamsa is portrayed as an ideal society that does define itself against the past (the South India Brahmanic influence and its basic political and social institutions), but quite selfconsciously identifies it self as a transformation and extension of the older tradition. The subtleties of such a transformation are exemplified by the normative pattern for Sinhalese kingship provided in what Tambiah and B. Smith have called a "paradigm of kingship", the Asokan concept of Dharmaviiaya. This concept of kingship is central to the idea of social order in Anuradhapuro, Sri Lanka and its political legitimation process differs markedly from South Indian concepts of kingship even though it shores the some origin.</p> <p>The Sri Lankan conceptualization of what a state should be appears to be a remarkable break from the political and religious tradition in mainland India. The design of Sri Lankan statehood differs in that it is schism-preventing or monistic. Virtually all aspects of Sri Lankan society appear to revolve around a fear of disorder and disruptive forces. The ideal social order in Sri Lanka is rooted in this concern. This perspective is in direct contrast to Chola concepts of the state which can be called non-centralized or pyramidally segmented. Burton Stein puts forward in his book Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India, the idea of the segmented state in which each level of political organization stands in opposition to each other inviting rivalry and dispute between lesser political leaders (Nadu chieftains in order to legitimize the soveriegnty of the king. This system appears lo be in marked contrast to the Sri Lankan political theory which disunity is considered tantamount to chaos. In the Cholan segmentary state unlike in Ceylon) there are two kinds of centres in both the conceptual and empirical sense.</p> <p>As to the first sense) the segmentary state exists as a state only insofar as the segmentary units comprising it (Nᾱdus) recognize a single ritual authority -- the king. This recognition provides some legitimacy for the nodus which are in themselves centres in the second sense. In a segmentary state) politicol control is appropriately distributed among many throughout the system) ritual supremacy is legitimately conceded to a single centre. In the Cholan state) the king (dēva-rᾱja) as protector of the social order sacrificially attains divinity and becomes Siva incarnate. Ritually incorporative kingship of this kind provides the ritual focus for balanced and opposed internal groupings.</p> <p>In the Sri Lankan state there is on amalgamation or absorption of iocalized chieftainships so that they lose their essential being as smaller parts of a political whole. Hence, ritually incorporative kingship in Sri Lanka does not exist at the some incorporative level of organization as in the Chola state.</p> | en_US |
dc.subject | History | en_US |
dc.subject | Religion | en_US |
dc.subject | History | en_US |
dc.title | Political and Religious Transition in Medieval South India and Sri Lanka | en_US |
dc.type | thesis | en_US |
dc.description.degree | Master of Arts (MA) | en_US |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
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fulltext.pdf | 35.51 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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