Transcript Religious Landscape, Lineage & Politics

Religious Landscape, Lineage
& Politics
300-700 CE
I. Land grants & agricultural development
II. Land grants and state benefits
III. Religious elites & land grants
IV. Puranic traditions
V. Dharmasastra
VI. Temples & monasteries: social space
VII. Temples & monasteries: protective space
VIII. Human time & cosmic time
IX. Vishnu Purana
X. Mahavamsa
I. Land grants & agricultural
development
Indirect development
Grants to individuals & families
Grants to religious specialists
II. Land grants & state benefits
State control
Landholder intermediaries
Economic expansion
Decentralized social service
Patron-client relations
Image of the patron
III. Religious elites & land
grants
Brahmans/brahmins
Shramanic teachers
Jain & Buddhist monastics
IV. Puranic traditions
Siva, Vishnu, Brahma, Durga, Lakshmi
Vedic antecedents & local cults
Purana texts
Temple spaces
Sacrifice as ritual gift in temple
Purification & knowledge in ritual act
V. Dharmashastra
Treatises on social order
Codifications re: varna, age, gender
Religious & social diversity
Social & cosmic order
VI. Temples & monasteries as
social space
Perform authority
Status & patronage
Networking
Pleasure & recreation
VII. Temples & monasteries:
protective space
Access points to divine or suprahuman
power
Signs & traces of the divine
Signs & traces of the shramanic teachers
VIII. Human time & cosmic
time
Origin stories
Families & devotional communities
Arguments for lineage & inheritance
Arguments for human history & cosmic
order
IX. Vishnu Purana
7-10 c. CE
History of universe
Biography of Vishnu
Histories & predictions of kings
Arguments for social order
Mapping landscape for ritual & pilgrimage
X. Mahavamsa
Late 5th c. CE
History of Buddhist tradition
History of royal lineage in Lanka (Sri
Lanka)
History of potent traces of Buddha
Mapping landscape for ritual & pilgrimage