| Panel 87 at the Annual
Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, March 22-25, 2001
[Back to Lubin's Research] Transregional Culture-Building in Premodern
and Early Modern Asia
Organizer: Timothy Lubin (Washington and Lee University) This panel aims to provide
a framework for modeling the processes by which “high cultural” systems
have been developed and have spread in premodern and early modern Asia.
The individual papers will examine the creation and consolidation of Sinitic
culture in early China (Brooks), the construction
of Sanskritic culture and the mechanics of “Sanskritization” in classical
South Asia (Lubin), and a comparison of the Islamizing
of Bengal and the Buddhicizing of Southeast Asia in the precolonial and
colonial periods (Charney). The broad questions
to be addressed are: How do transregional cultural forms relate to the
political and social processes they contribute or respond to? What
are the cultural vehicles of such a system (e.g., literary texts, public
performances, rites and customs)? Through what sorts of individuals
and institutions are such systems spread? How are local social and
cultural institutions and ideas dealt with by transregional systems (e.g.,
through accommodation, suppression, redefinition)? What is the role
of a literary language or lingua franca in facilitating a sense of transregional
unity? What is the impact of such link languages on local languages
(e.g., replacement, creation of a high register marked by linguistic borrowings,
literization and the generation of new genres)? What sorts of differences
are there between transregional culture-building “from above” (directed
by religious, political, or economic elites) and “from below” (driven by
“popular” appropriations and reform movements originating outside the elites)?
Comparing individual cases across diverse regions and periods is meant
to provide an opportunity for identifying common patterns, the better to
understand what makes each individual case distinctive.
“Sinicization
in Pre-Imperial East Asia”
E. Bruce Brooks (Warring States Project, University of Massachusetts) Abstract: Between the collapse of Jou sovereignty in the early 08th century and the unification of the Chinese culture area by Chin in the late 03rd century, there occurred a number of developments for which the term “Sinicization” is an imperfect though convenient label. I will try to suggest, with a glance at the parallel Greek and Indian multi-state situations, why the Chinese case came as it did. Among the centralizing factors to be considered are: (1) the suppression of non-Chinese peoples and their languages and traditions, (2) an escalation of war and incorporative conquest among the Chinese states, (3) elite propaganda using both genuine and forged texts as authorities in a more or less public debate to establish an effective pedigree for the unity principle, and (4) the emergence of the northern steppe culture as a common enemy. Meanwhile, centralization was hampered by: (1) the increasing importance, to the militarized state, of the ordinary population, whose interests were essentially pacific, (2) the development of new technologies for defense against sieges, (3) a late-04th-century maverick elite theory that provided a basis for stabilizing the multi-state system, and (4) the lack of an effective counterweight to the polarization brought about by the hostilities at the northern frontier. Of special interest is the transformation of the “Sinitic” worldview itself during the period, partly by incorporating concepts of rulership and statecraft drawn from India and Iran, and from the lessons of the Alexandrian conquest of Bactria in the late 04th century. It has perhaps not been sufficiently appreciated that the triumphant Sinitic state rejected (or preserved only in a showcase form) what is usually considered the theoretical basis of the typical (Confucian) Sinitic worldview of the previous centuries. [Top] “Sanskritic Culture and Sanskritization from Above
and Below in Classical South Asia”
Timothy Lubin (Washington
and Lee University)
Abstract: Srinivas used the word “Sanskritization”
to describe groups’ efforts to raise their status by adopting the practices
and linguistic markers associated with Sanskrit texts and Brahmanical ritual
forms. Historians have used it to denote instances in which religious
and political elites have adopted and promoted Sanskritic deities and ideals,
and the use of Sanskrit itself as a criterion of cosmopolitanism and universal
values. This paper proposes a model of Sanskritization, examining
some crucial moments in the construction of “classical” (literary) Hinduism.
The Sanskritic “great tradition,” propounded by brahmin priests and scholars,
has endured over three millennia through a few basic strategies, continuously
redefining itself in relation to local factors, which in turn are smuggled
into the panregional culture itself. The
Grhya Sutras (6th-2nd
c. BCE) applied “high-cult” (shrauta) standards to regionally diverse
domestic ritual and customary usage. This standardization established
mechanisms for promoting brahmin authority and accommodating non-shrauta
religious formats (e.g., shrine worship) within a “Vedic” framework.
In the early centuries C.E., the Puranas harmonized diverse traditions
within an overarching pantheon by identifying or affiliating local saints
and deities with Shiva, Vishnu, or the Goddess (while often retaining the
local name); the mahatmya knitted local shrines into a pan-Indian
geography. Kings adopted Sanskritic deities as patrons, raising costly
temples and striking coins with the deity’s name and image, settled brahmins
on donated lands, and patronized Sanskrit literateurs. The hagiographical
literature of the bhakti movement (9th-18th c.) provides a third
case, in which the brahmin biographers legitimate even low-caste and female
saints in terms of Brahmin standards of holiness. [Top
(Panel Abstract)]
in Precolonial
and Colonial Bengal and Southeast Asia”
Michael Walter Charney
(National University of Singapore)
Abstract: Recent work on Islamization in
Bengal (Eaton 1993) and Buddhicization in Burma (Charney 1999) suggests
that these seemingly very different developments have much in common. By
looking comparatively at these developments during two phases of changing
social relations, this paper seeks to formulate a model for understanding
the formation, integration, and maintenance of cultural systems. In the
first phase examined, early modern reciprocal social relationships and
elite accumulation of agricultural surplus encouraged a system of personal
patronage (by ruling elites for themselves and their clients) of saints
and arhants and bodies of religious textual specialists. Extraordinary
forms of personal piety (e.g.,
aranya-vasi practices) and religious-language
textual orthodoxy according to classical textual norms conferred prestige,
and encouraged the acquisition of high-status religious symbols, texts,
and titles. In the second phase (the early colonial period), however, popular
Muslim and Buddhist communal identities developed in the context of rural
dislocation and the commercialization of rural social relations.
This formation was fed by rural religious “specialists,” increased rural
literacy in vernacular languages as a result of both religious and secular
indigenous schools (independent of the colonial regime), the production
and spread of stories reinforcing a Muslim or Theravada Buddhist world-view,
reduced emphasis on textual orthodoxy, religious patronage by group conscription
rather than by individuals, and the increasing inclusion in traditional
agricultural festivals of Buddhist and Muslim symbols, rites, and religious
specialists. Thus, parallel changes in the production and transmission
of transregional religious cultures accompanied parallel social, economic,
and political developments. [Top]
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