When and how did globalization begin? Is Wallerstein correct in asserting that a transcultural ‘world system’ can be only be traced back to the global explorations and trade networks of the sixteenth century?Footnote 1 Is globalization as a phenomenon inextricably tied to the rise of modern capitalism?Footnote 2 Or can forms of globalization be identified in the premodern world as well, as Frank and Gills propose when they see the first ‘world systems’ forming five thousand years ago; as Seland argues when he analyzes Indian Ocean trade; or as Jennings maintains when he identifies globalizing tendencies in Ancient Mesopotamia, Cahokia, or the Indus Valley?Footnote 3 A number of studies have demonstrated that globalization is a useful category for understanding long-distance connectivity in antiquity and the middle ages as well as in the modern era, even if early ‘globalizations’ were not primarily transregional economies.Footnote 4 In his magisterial work on the history of Islam, for example, Lapidus argues that a worldwide cultural system such as Islam can be understood as a global ‘world system’ even if it is not a ‘world economy’.Footnote 5 Voll similarly analyzes the Islamic world as a community of discourse, built on a shared ‘Islamic experience’, rather than a Wallersteinian economic ‘world system’ Footnote 6. I argue that it is precisely this formation and continued negotiation of a transregional identity, rather than a shared economy, that defines globalization, whether ancient or modern.
This article analyzes two different forms of transcultural connectivity in the ancient world, both associated with the expansion of Buddhism. I contend that the formation of a premodern transregional Buddhist network must be understood as a form of globalization, and that a shared ideology facilitated the creation of a transregional communal identity. Ancient Buddhism may be understood as a ‘world-system’, but not necessarily in a purely economic sense (although it is also closely associated with a system of trade networks), but in terms of Wallerstein’s more expansive definition of a world-system as ‘a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rites of legitimation, and coherence.Footnote 7 To this I would add that the formulation of a new group identity is what makes this type of social ‘world system’ possible.
In my analysis of Buddhist expansion as a form of ancient globalization, I hope to contribute to the larger debates surrounding globalization in the ancient world in two specific ways. First, this article seeks to draw more attention to the role that issues of identity play in globalizing processes; second, it interrogates whether notions of core and periphery, so often invoked in models of globalization are necessary components of all forms of globalization.
I will present two ancient Buddhist concepts, the cakravartin and the bodhisattva, that may serve as lenses for understanding two different modes of globalization:
1. Globalization as a form of long-distance connectivity between centre(s) and periphery.
2. Globalization as a network of interconnected nodes without a single centre.
This article, like those of Cobb and Høisæter in this Special Issue (henceforth SI), argues that one form of transregional connectivity in the ancient world can be understood as a network with a multiplicity of centres and a multidirectional flow of goods and ideas (the bodhisattva model). But I also identify a different model of globalization, the cakravartin model, that involves an initial unidirectional process of influence from a chronological and geographical origin point, even if that connectivity may become more multidirectional over time.
The idea of globalization as a network of multiplicities that resists geographical and chronological organization echoes Appadurai’s notion of the global economy as a rhizome or non-linear network (an idea ultimately derived from the French poststructuralists Deleuze and Guattari).Footnote 8 The metaphor of the rhizome was first applied to the global spread of Buddhism in Rocha’s work.Footnote 9 I argue, however, that it is only possible with one of the two models of globalization (that associated with the bodhisattva) to trace a history of Buddhism that is rhizomatic; the other model (that of the cakravartin) is what Deleuze and Guattari would call an ‘arboreal’ model that is linear and defined by a vertical hierarchy. But the cakravartin model is arboreal in the way of an Indian banyan tree, in that it involves movement out from a centre, but also the continuous creation of new centres.
The cakravartin and Buddhist globalization
Although the precise dates for the lifetime of the historical Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama in Sanskrit, Siddhattha Gotama in Pali), are still debated, there is consensus that Buddhism originated in north India around the fifth century BCE.Footnote 10 Although Buddhism began in a specific region at a particular time, it would be an oversimplification to see the expansion of Buddhism as an outward movement from a single centre towards ever more peripheral points. Rather, after the initial rapid expansion from a geographical node in north India, Buddhism soon turns into an expanding network of interconnected locations, where each new node in the network has the potential to become a new centre from which further expansion can happen.
I examine globalization in an ancient Asian context through the lens of two central Buddhist concepts: the cakravartin and the bodhisattva. Buddhist texts define a cakravartin as a world monarch, a benevolent ruler who fuses spiritual and political power in his global reign.Footnote 11 A cakravartin is the ‘conqueror of the four directions’, and his realm is therefore per definition a global one, extending to the ends of the known world.Footnote 12 The term cakravartin is first used during the Indian Maurya Empire (322-185 BCE), and is especially applied in later Buddhist literature to the emperor Aśoka (ca. 270-232 BCE), who expanded the borders of the Mauryan Empire and was instrumental in the expansion of Buddhism.Footnote 13 Buddhist texts construct an image of Aśoka as an ideal world ruler and the very embodiment of the cakravartin ideal. This article argues that the cakravartin can be understood as a symbol of one model of Buddhist globalization, one where the outward spread of the religion from a central location coincides with the growing military and ideological dominion of a Buddhist king. I will show, however, that this form of globalization, associated with a cakravartin, only represents the initial stage of the formation of a Buddhist world system.
The term cakravartin literally means ‘turner of the wheel’ and is closely connected with the image of the Buddhist doctrine as a wheel set in motion by the Buddha at the time of his first public sermon, a metaphor that itself conveys a sense of mobility and expansion.Footnote 14 A cakravartin is, per definition, someone who is instrumental in keeping the wheel of Buddhism moving. The cakravartin becomes the locus for a new sort of globalizing aspiration as he is seen as a monarch with a potential worldwide rule. While a wheel is an appropriate metaphor for the consequent movement of the Buddhist doctrine throughout Asia, it is simultaneously an image that evokes war chariots and conquest and perhaps even Aśoka’s military expansion of his realm.Footnote 15 A cakravartin is, according to Buddhist texts, an ideal ruler who extends his political territory to the ends of the world while also promoting social order and righteousness. While Buddhism began as a small religious movement in northern India, it expanded into a transregional culture under the auspices of the Maura emperor Aśoka, himself a convert to the tradition. The reason for this expansion of Buddhism was not merely military power, however, but rather Aśoka’s deliberate use of Buddhist ideology to construct a new type of translocal identity.Footnote 16
While several modern historians have followed the Buddhist tradition in interpreting Aśoka’s enthusiastic promotion of Buddhism as stemming from his own personal piety following a religious conversion,Footnote 17 Thapar is surely correct in pointing out that Aśoka’s particular version of Buddhism, with its emphasis on social responsibility and religious tolerance, also served a useful role in unifying his complex multicultural empire.Footnote 18 Buddhism was not merely the religious tradition that happened to be promoted by the first Indian emperor with globalizing ambitions, but also an integral part of the ideology of expansion itself.
As I have argued elsewhere, the articulation of a transregional identity, as exemplified in Aśoka’s edicts, plays a vital part in the cultural expansion of Buddhism.Footnote 19 The creation and use of a particular form of non-denominational Buddhist-based ideology in the Asokan edicts helped construct a new type of translocal identity, defined by adherence to a common ethos rather than religious or local affiliation. The creation of a new identity that is global in its aspiration in the rock edicts therefore lays the ideological groundwork for the expansion of the empire itself.
Through his public edicts, carved into rocks and pillars throughout his empire,Footnote 20 Aśoka constructed an overarching imperial ideology around the significant Buddhist term dhamma, which occurs over one hundred times in his brief edicts.Footnote 21 This Middle Indic term, which can be translated as ‘duty’, ‘righteousness’, or even ‘the teaching of the Buddha’ is not, however, in Aśoka’s edicts associated with uniquely Buddhist ideas such as the Buddha’s four noble truths. It is possible, therefore, that the dhamma-centred ideology Aśoka was advocating should not necessarily be identified with Buddhism itself, but rather that it constituted a new non-denominational Buddhist-inspired ideology that was meant to transcend religious differences. Out of Aśoka’s edicts, we can see a new form of identity emerging, an identity defined more by adherence to a new common ethos than merely by religious or local affiliation. Olivelle has even argued that Aśoka’s ideology, as it emerges from his edicts, may be defined as a form of ‘civil religion’, a non-sectarian form of nationalism.Footnote 22 In fact, in the Greek and Aramaic translations of Aśoka’s edicts, found in the far north-western parts of his empire,Footnote 23 dhamma is rendered in a way that removes it from a Buddhist context altogether and gives it a meaning that transcends traditional religious boundaries: dhamma is translated as eusebia (‘piety’) in the Greek inscriptions and qsyt (‘truth’) in Aramaic, terms that convey ethical behavior, but certainly not anything exclusively Buddhist.Footnote 24
In his edicts, Aśoka advocated for non-denominational ethical ideas, applicable to his subjects regardless of rank and geographical location, such as doing much good and little evil, and being kind, generous, truthful, and pure. He wrote about pardoning prisoners sentenced to death,Footnote 25 banning the killing of animals,Footnote 26 planting fruit trees to benefit the public,Footnote 27 and promoting tolerance toward all religions, decreeing that his subjects should listen to and respect the doctrines of others.Footnote 28 Aśoka’s vision of a religiously diverse empire where everyone lives by a non-denominational code of conduct served to create cultural cohesion and harmony in an otherwise very diverse society. Aśoka even promoted a universal health care plan that included providing necessary medicines for both humans and animals.Footnote 29
Famously, Aśoka also expressed deep regret for the loss of life in a battle he had won against the rebellious Kaliṅga people.Footnote 30 While the emperor’s grief over his slain enemies has often been read as a personal testimony to the devastating effects of war, the very public expression of Aśoka’s grief in a massive rock edict suggests that the emperor is simultaneously sending a message of hope for future peace and an implied reminder that a king does have the power to destroy rebellions, should he choose to do so. The thirteenth rock edict thus manages to convey both the emperor’s deep love for all his people and the futility of any future rebellions against him. Aśoka’s compassion for his enemies is in later Buddhist literature interpreted as one of the signs of his status as a universal monarch. A cakravartin is supposed to embody the ten royal virtues of generosity, morality, self-sacrifice, truthfulness, kindness, self-control, lack of anger, non-violence, patience, and adherence to righteousness, and Aśoka’s grief over the fallen Kaliṅgas serves as further proof of his position as cakravartin in the later Buddhist tradition.Footnote 31
In his edicts, Aśoka took the first step towards the creation of a global cultural identity by articulating a unified dhamma that is applicable to people across his vast empire, as well as to those foreigners who live on its outskirts. In addition to Aśokan inscriptions in the popular Middle Indic Prakrit dialect, there are also an Aśokan bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription in Kandahār (present-day Afghanistan), one in Greek, five in Aramaic, and one bilingual inscription in Prakrit and Aramaic, in which the Prakrit is written in Aramaic script. Similar ideas of a universal dhamma, applicable to all, are conveyed in all these inscriptions. For whom were these texts written? The use of the vernacular language of Prakrit, rather than the prestigious literary language of Sanskrit, suggests that the emperor’s goal was to communicate with as many of his subjects as possible, regardless of their social status.Footnote 32 As Thapar has noted, Prakrit was in this time period a language that ‘transcended political boundaries and most religious affiliations’.Footnote 33 It is, however, unclear how widespread literacy was in India during Aśoka’s reign; Aśoka’s edicts are themselves the oldest preserved Indian texts, with the exception of the undeciphered seal inscriptions of the Indus civilization. Was writing known in India in the centuries before Aśoka? While it is possible that writing on perishable materials flourished in India prior to Aśoka, there is no preserved writing that predates his edicts. Falk has even proposed that Aśoka himself may be the inventor of the kharoṣṭhī script used in his edicts.Footnote 34 If this is the case, Aśoka’s audience must have been deeply puzzled by the appearance of his public inscriptions and their intended message. Since Aśoka employed the popular language of Prakrit, rather than more formal Sanskrit, however, I find it reasonable to assume that he wanted to communicate his intentions to people who spoke Prakrit. The fact that several of his inscriptions were also translated into grammatically correct Greek and Aramaic further suggests that his motivation for ordering the carving of the edicts must have been a desire to communicate his ideas as widely as possible, and that some degree of literacy must be ascribed to his audience. The inscriptions can of course still be interpreted as ‘a symbolic assertion of imperial presence’ as Olivelle claims, but it seems unlikely that his edicts were mere visual symbols intended to impress a completely illiterate public.Footnote 35
In addition to his edicts, Aśoka established numerous stūpas, or Buddhist shrines containing relics of the Buddha, throughout his empire. Alongside the royal edicts, the stūpas served to establish the emerging religion of Buddhism as a physical, monumental imperial presence throughout the Indian landscape. Pious Buddhist legends claim that Aśoka built a staggering 84,000 stūpas in India, but the impossibly high number is likely a way of indicating the significance of relic cult as religious worship under Aśoka.Footnote 36 While the construction of stūpas containing relics appears to be a pre-Buddhist practice as well, Aśoka appropriated this local form of worship as part of an imperial ideology. So effective was Aśoka’s stūpa construction – or appropriation of pre-existing stūpas - as a reminder of his status as a cakravartin that many later Buddhist monarchs took to building stūpas precisely to imitate Aśoka in an attempt to establish themselves as cakravartins as well.Footnote 37
Stūpas are not just visual markers of Buddhist presence, but significant centres of Buddhist practice as well, both for monks and nuns and for lay followers. Worshippers would circumambulate the stūpas in order to gain spiritual rewards, and leave gifts to the Buddha or to the monastic centre associated with the stūpa. Footnote 38 Common gifts included monastic robes, food, land, and medicine.Footnote 39 Many stūpas developed into building complexes with monasteries, refractories, and assembly halls.Footnote 40 Pilgrims often visited sites associated with important Buddhist relics, and the building of new stūpas was therefore also a significant boost for long-distance connectivity and the establishment of new monasteries, trade, and pilgrimage networks.Footnote 41
Through his advocacy for the Buddhist concept of dhamma, his political and military expansion, and his dispatching of envoys to other realms, Aśoka ushered in a globalizing period in Buddhist history. His edicts and his stūpas represent a transformative moment in the history of Buddhism, a moment when a regional form of practice is reinvented as a universal religion and a new non-local identity is formulated.
The spread of Buddhism after Aśoka
By the third century BCE, Buddhism had become what Reynolds and Hallisey call a ‘civilizational religion’,Footnote 42 a religious tradition associated with high culture and transcending regional boundaries, not unlike Lapidus’ vision of Islam as a world culture in the seventeenth century.Footnote 43 Buddhism reached the island of Sri Lanka around the third century BCE; according to Buddhist tradition, the dhamma was brought there by a monk by the name of Mahinda, Aśoka’s own son. The king of Sri Lanka eagerly accepted Buddhism, and several Buddhist monasteries were built. In Sri Lanka, a Buddhist canon was first recorded in writing at the fourth Theravāda Buddhist council in the first century BCE. The language used was Pali, a vernacular Middle Indic language that would have been understood by a large percentage of people in India and Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka soon became a vibrant centre of Pali literature and Buddhist scholarship.
The detailed monastic codes (vinaya) of Theravāda Buddhism outlines a complete code of conduct for monks and nuns, down to the tiniest details of daily life, such as when and what to eat, what to wear, what not to say to other monks, and how to avoid even the appearance of sexual misconduct. The vinaya codes also outline the various sanctions that are taken against those who break the rules. The Prātimokṣasūtra of the Sarvāstivādin school, for example, list four infractions that are so serious that they will lead to immediate expulsion from the monastic community: Engaging in sexual intercourse (‘even with an animal’, the text adds helpfully), stealing, committing murder, and claiming to have supernatural knowledge when this is not the case.Footnote 44 Claiming to have supernatural knowledge if one actually does possess such knowledge is also a violation of the monastic code, but this is a lesser infraction that is met with nothing more than a stern reprimand. Other rules prohibit carrying messages from lay followers to their illicit lovers, asking generous lay people for lavish gifts, speaking suggestively to women, or touching money. Many of these rules for monks’ and nuns’ behaviour seem designed to maintain a good working relationship with the lay community; the lay followers should be able to trust that monks will not seduce local women, steal from rich merchants, or make false claims about supernatural abilities to attract attention or donations.
The vinaya rules form a part of the Pali Canon (tipiṭaka), alongside the compilation of words ascribed to the Buddha (suttapiṭaka) and the philosophical explanations of Buddhist ideas (abhidhammapiṭaka). When Buddhism spreads throughout Asia, then, what is transmitted is not only ideas, but also practices, rituals, and the very idea of monastic institutions where significant numbers of monks or nuns devote their lives to meditation and studying, while observing appropriate conduct.
Theravāda Buddhism, the ‘School of the Elders’, then spread from Sri Lanka to Southeast Asia. According to the Pali chronicle Mahāvaṃsa (fifth century CE), Buddhism was brought to Burma (Suvarṇabhūmi, present-day Myanmar) by two monks, envoys sent by Aśoka himself, in the third century BCE. During the Kingdom of Pagan (849-1297), Theravāda Buddhism flourished in Burma and spread from there into mainland Southeast Asia. Although Theravāda Buddhism may have been introduced to Thailand by emissaries from Sri Lanka early on, the area was dominated by Mahāyāna Buddhism until the thirteenth century, when Theravāda Buddhism was made state religion in the Kingdom of Sukhotai (1238-1583). Theravāda Buddhism had already been introduced in Laos in the seventh to eighth centuries CE.
While Theravāda Buddhism used Pali, a northern Indian dialect, as a sacred language, the Mahāyāna, or ‘Great Vehicle’ school frequently used the ancient culture language of Sanskrit instead, supplemented by texts in local languages. Mahāyāna Buddhism reached China via Silk Road trade around the first century CE, and spread from there to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan in the fourth century.
In the seventh century CE, Buddhism was introduced to Tibet by the local king Songtsen Gampo, perhaps due to the influence of his Chinese wife. By what mechanisms did Buddhism continue to spread throughout Asia? Although Buddhism was often patronized by local monarchs, the continued expansion of Buddhism after Aśoka was due to two groups of people: monks and merchants.
This widespread diffusion of Buddhism was closely tied to writing and literacy.Footnote 45 While the older Hindu tradition of India had perfected elaborate techniques of memorization in order to transmit sacred texts orally from teachers to initiated students, Buddhism adopted two new communication strategies that played a significant part in its global spread: writing and translation. While the Vedas of Hinduism were meant to be memorized and recited orally in the holy ancient language of Sanskrit, a majority of the Buddhist community initially adopted the vernacular language of Pali. Pali is a constructed language, combining elements of many different Middle Indic regional dialects into a new non-local language that would have been accessible to a large number of people. While Hindus viewed the Sanskrit language as a sacred, primordial reality, rendering the idea of translating the Vedas absurd, the early Buddhists took a far more pragmatic approach to language: language was a mere tool for communicating ideas, and the message of the Buddha could therefore be transmitted in whatever language people could understand. Sanskrit was regarded as too sacred to commit to writing, but there were no similar restrictions on writing down Buddhist texts. Some Asian countries, such as China, already had a long-standing literary tradition before the arrival of Buddhism, but in many other places, the idea of writing was introduced alongside Buddhism itself. Significantly, Indian-based alphabets were often given a local form, and Buddhist texts were translated into the local language or languages. Although Buddhism certainly brought with it Indian ideas and traditions to other parts of Asia, it was often simultaneously instrumental in recording local literary traditions in writing. While the original Pali canon of Buddhist texts, often believed to contain the words of the Buddha, was revered in many Buddhist countries, different Asian cultures nevertheless developed their own local Buddhist canons that include texts translated from Pali or Sanskrit as well as original Buddhist works in the local language. Such local canons include the Chinese Tripitaka, the Japanese Taisho Issaikyo, the Tibetan Kanjur and Tanjur, and the Mongolian Buddhist canon. Because vernacularization played a critical role in the very formation of the earliest Buddhist canon in India, it is hardly surprising that the spread of Buddhist culture was not coterminous with the spread of Indian languages. By implication, then, Buddhist identity was not closely tied to language, script, or geographical location, but rather to a shared ideology.
The spread of Buddhism was also closely associated with trade and trade networks. Whitfield claims that there is a ‘symbiotic link’ between Buddhists and merchants in the early Buddhist world.Footnote 46 On an ideological level, trade itself became a metaphor for Buddhist values; the Buddha is often referred to in early Buddhist texts as a ‘great caravan leader’ (mahāsārthavāha), leading his followers from the suffering of sa&mdot;ṃsāra to their final destination of nirvāṇa. Footnote 47 On a more practical level, many monasteries were closely allied with traders and their networks and supported regional trade both by lending money and warehousing goods.Footnote 48 In return, traders and merchants gave substantial donations to monasteries, which helped to maintain the monastic communities. Many stūpas and monasteries are located along trade routes, which further facilitated the close relationships between the monastic and merchant communities.Footnote 49 When monks and nuns had to travel to other regions and monasteries, they frequently travelled with trading caravans, which made travel for individual monks or nuns a great deal easier.Footnote 50
How does the transregional spread of Buddhism, beginning with the reign of Aśoka, compare to other forms of globalization in the ancient world? Significantly, even though Buddhism initially spread through the military expansion of Aśoka’s empire, the main spread of Buddhist religion and civilization was not tied to military power or the hegemony of any one kingdom. Buddhism rose to prominence at a time of expanding Indian trade relations with other parts of Asia, which allowed for a globalizing spread of the tradition and the development of multiple local forms of Buddhist practice. The expansion of Buddhism, however, was not a single event, a movement outward from a powerful centre towards a periphery, but rather a series of complex concentric waves, with several starting points.Footnote 51 While Buddhism began in India, India did not remain the centre of all Buddhist civilization, geographically or ideologically. China developed its own distinct form of Buddhism, which spread to Korea and Japan; Tibetan Buddhism became highly influential in Mongolia; and the Theravāda Buddhism of Sri Lanka spread to Southeast Asia.
In post-Aśokan times, Buddhism was no longer an expanding national religion, but an international exchange network where ideas, texts, religious artifacts, and relics, flowed freely across far-flung regions. Epigraphic material has proven to be an excellent source for tracing this expanding network.Footnote 52 This network was made possible by a new technology of knowledge, writing, as well as the transregional spread of monastic institutions, which were particularly well suited to the transmission and preservation of that knowledge. Just like the internet has sometimes been identified as a factor in recent forms of globalization, so writing can be seen as a similar transformative technology in ancient Asia that effected improved communication and significant cultural interchange.
The spread of Buddhism necessitated a constant re-negotiation between a transregional Buddhist identity and local identities. Extensive translations from Sanskrit and Pali into highly literary Chinese allowed, for example, Chinese Buddhists to define themselves as Buddhist while remaining immersed in classical Chinese culture. Sometimes, local populations devized creative strategies to argue for the indigenous and local nature of authoritative Buddhist texts. Tibetan Buddhists developed the innovative idea of termas, sacred texts or relics that the eighth-century Indian Buddhist master Padmasambhava was said to have hidden in secret places in Tibet. These ‘hidden treasures’ could then literally be dug up from the Tibetan soil in future generations, and many such termas have been identified by pious Tibetan Buddhists. Although these texts or objects have cultural connections to India and to the Indian sage Padmasambhava, their burial and reemergence from the Tibetan soil have made them, in a powerful symbolic sense, indigenous products of the Tibetan land itself.
Significantly, Buddhism possesses not just one, but multiple religious canons, composed in different geographical regions, each with their own spheres of cultural influence. The Pali canon (tipiṭaka), codified and written down in Sri Lanka, was enormously influential in Southeast Asia. But while the texts were preserved in their original Pali linguistic form, they were often recorded in local scripts, rendering the canon more accessible and perhaps also more familiar to the local population. Pali texts were also composed in India, as were Sanskrit Buddhist texts, particularly those of the Mahāyāna school. The Chinese Tripiṭaka is a completely separate canon, consisting of texts translated from Sanskrit, as well as original compositions. The Tibetan Buddhist canon consists of texts translated from both Sanskrit and Chinese, as well as original Tibetan works. While the Kanjur portion of the Tibetan Buddhist canon consists of sūtras translated from Sanskrit or Chinese, the voluminous Tanjur portion contains commentaries and assorted texts. The Tibetan Buddhist canon was in turn translated into Mongolian and exerted a profound influence on Mongolian Buddhism, while the Manchu and Tangut canons are both based on translations of Chinese texts.Footnote 53 The Japanese translation of the Chinese Tripiṭaka consists of an astonishing 2,184 texts, including many original works.Footnote 54 The tradition of printing texts using xylographs or woodcuts was passed from China to Tibet, where xylographs are still in widespread use.Footnote 55 In South and Southeast Asia, however, hand written palm leaf manuscripts have remained far more common than printed books.Footnote 56 In spite of all these local differences in textual traditions and modes of transmission, however, the ideal of a single Buddhist dhamma and a transregional Buddhist identity has nevertheless persisted to this day.
From cakravartin to bodhisattva
After the decline of the Indian Mauryan empire, the notion of the cakravartin as an ideal political and worldly figure begins to fade from Buddhist texts, although there are sporadic attempts at identifying cakravartins elsewhere. From the third to the sixth centuries, several Chinese Buddhist texts attempted to identify stūpas built by Aśoka at various sites in China, despite the historical improbability of Aśoka’s builders traversing the Himālayas, and Deeg argues that these texts are likely attempts at legitimizing local Chinese rulers by connecting them with Aśoka’s universal rulership as a cakravartin. Footnote 57
Some later kings, like the eighth-century Tibetan Khri Srong Lde Brtsan (Trisong Detsen), claimed cakravartin status.Footnote 58 In Southeast Asia, the Cambodian Jayavarman II, the ninth-century founder of the Khmer Empire,Footnote 59 Anawrahta and Kyanzitta of Pagan in the eleventh century,Footnote 60 Lu’thai of Sukhothai (fourteenth century),Footnote 61 and Tilokarāja of Chiang Mai in the fifteenth century define themselves as cakravartins, but in these cases, the titles are mere honorifics, evocations of the power of Aśoka.Footnote 62 King Lu’thai even used to carry a great wheel with him while traveling around his kingdom, a visual reminder of his claim to cakravartin status.Footnote 63 When the term cakravartin is used in post-Mauryan Buddhist texts, however, it is more often used in a metaphorical sense, applied to the spiritual figure of the bodhisattva, which features prominently in Mahāyāna Buddhist texts.Footnote 64
A bodhisattva (literally: an ‘enlightenment being’) is an enlightened person who has chosen to be reborn out of compassion for a suffering world. Although a bodhisattva may possess great powers, he or she is not viewed as a political figure, but rather as someone who aspires to bring all living beings to enlightenment. A bodhisattva is said to watch over a ‘Buddha field’ (buddhakṣetra), or dimension of space and time. Scholars of Buddhism even refer to these Buddha fields as ‘world systems’, in a sense that goes far beyond the Wallersteinian; a Buddha field is an entire universe, stretching in all cardinal directions, and home to countless sentient beings. In a sense, these Buddha fields are alternate dimensions, and only bodhisattvas can travel from one to the other. Humans inhabit a Buddha field called Sahā, located ‘in the south’ of this infinite hyperspace.Footnote 65
Each Buddha field has its own laws and inhabitants and may have different cultures, languages, or even separate forms of time and space from other Buddha fields. A bodhisattva can travel freely between different Buddha fields but does not try to change their local features; the bodhisattva’s only task is to purify the Buddha field by eliminating suffering and bringing all sentient beings in it to spiritual liberation. I argue that even though Buddha fields, as purely religious and philosophical abstractions, have no direct impact on politics, they do nevertheless provide a conceptual paradigm for a new form of globalization in a time of continued Buddhist expansion. Local cultures may (like Buddha fields) be radically different from each other and from the original Indian Buddhist culture, but as long as Buddhist compassion reigns there, nothing needs to change. The idea of a bodhisattva governing a Buddha field provides a new model for understanding cultural diversity after the decline of a unified political empire: No longer an empire, the world becomes a network of interdependent cultures with a shared identity running across political (and even cosmic) boundaries.
The transition from a cakravartin to a bodhisattva as a symbol of Buddhist power is exemplified by the re-interpretation of Aśoka himself as a soteriological figure in China during the realm of the fifth-century Chinese emperor Wu of Liang; a statue of Aśoka from this time period depicts him as a Buddha and bears an inscription associating the Indian emperor with enlightenment and freedom from rebirth.Footnote 66 Popular Chinese Buddhist texts similarly describe Aśoka statues with miraculous, salvific powers.Footnote 67 Empress Wu Zetian (690-705 CE) of the Tang Dynasty initially gave herself the title cakravartin, before adopting the title of Maitreya, the bodhisattva of the future, instead.Footnote 68 The Pagan King Kyanzittha is similarly referred to as both a cakravartin and a bodhisattva in an inscription in the Ananda temple.Footnote 69 Striving to become a bodhisattva is a Mahāyāna ideal, described in great detail in such texts as the Bodhicāryāvatāra (ca. 700 CE).
The bodhisattva figure becomes a powerful locus for the negotiation of Buddhist identity. A bodhisattva is the very epitome of the universal as opposed to the local; his or her sphere of influence is an entire dimension of space-time. While a bodhisattva can be reborn in any location, at any time, as male or female, human or animal, the one unchanging part of a bodhisattva identity is boundless compassion with all living beings, a compassion that can in some sense be seen as an extension of Aśoka’s articulation of the dhamma at the heart of a new Buddhist identity that transcends ethnic, linguistic, and regional boundaries.
Buddhism and globalization
Other globalizing cultures from the ancient world, such as the Roman Empire or the polities which belonged to a wider Hellenistic civilization, often involved a strong political centre whose influence extended over a large surrounding area. How can we understand the continued globalizing tendency in Buddhism even after (and perhaps especially after) the decline of a central Buddhist state?
In the post-Mauryan era, we see a transition from a form of Buddhist globalization that involves expansion from a single centre to a different sort of global connectivity that involves multiple nodes of influence. Post-Mauryan Buddhism becomes a religious and cultural network, or what Goh refers to as a ‘Buddhist ecumene’,Footnote 70 recalling John Tomlinson’s definition of globalization as ‘complex connectivity’.Footnote 71 What held this cultural network together in the absence of a central state? Even when there is no single Buddhist canon, Buddhist ideas traveled widely, as did the material artifacts of Buddhism: Buddha images, votive tablets, and architectural forms like the stūpa. Swearer describes these material artifacts as ‘emblems of a ritually based galactic polity’, but they are also powerful symbols of a Buddhist identity that traverses local and regional boundaries.Footnote 72
I argue that the Buddhist concept of a bodhisattva and the attendant notion of a Buddha field may have helped facilitate the idea of multiple diverse regions being connected by and through the Buddhist tradition itself. The Buddhist vision of a cosmic multiverse filled with highly disparate realms, without a centre, but deeply connected to each other through a shared Buddhist identity, serves as a model for a global vision of the human world as well. While the initial cakravartin model of Buddhist expansion, exemplified by Aśoka as a virtuous, but powerful Buddhist emperor, to some extent privileged Indian culture over all others, the bodhisattva model of globalization fosters the local as well as the universal and does away with notions of centre and periphery.
The bodhisattva ideal is not India-centred, and it does not privilege any one geographical region over another. The bodhisattva, with boundless compassion for all living beings, regardless of nationality, gender, species, or universe of origin, exemplifies the interconnectedness of all living beings in a larger network of compassion. While bodhisattvas are not bound to a particular time or place, they can manifest locally. In Japan, bodhisattvas are sometimes identified with the local kami, and in Tibet, forms of the divine Tara are seen as bodhisattvas. Footnote 73 Such identifications can, of course, have political consequences, as seen in the identification with the Dalai Lama with Chen Rezig, or Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion.
A bodhisattva, as a Mahāyāna Buddhist ideal, is someone who can travel between various realms, in the widest possible sense, and yet sees all humanity as one.Footnote 74 In the words of the current Dalai Lama, who is identified by Tibetan Buddhists as a bodhisattva himself:
We should have this [compassion] from the depths of our heart, as if it were nailed there. Such compassion is not merely concerned with a few sentient beings such as friends and relatives, but extends up to the limits of the cosmos, in all directions and towards all beings throughout space.Footnote 75
This articulation of humanity as one and as interconnected may have its roots in the older idea of the cakravartin’s world-wide realm, but it is here re-interpreted as a bodhisattva’s vision for a global age.
Networks, agency, and globalization
The question of agency in globalizing processes is one that several authors in this SI raise. What is the role of individual agents vis-à-vis the role of larger systemic networks in globalization? While earlier historians have often over-emphasized the significance of individuals and neglecting the roles of larger networks, network analysis has often been critiqued for placing too much emphasis on systems and too little on the role of individual agents.Footnote 76 To some extent, all the authors in this SI choose a ‘middle path’ between emphasizing the networks to the exclusion of individuals and focusing on individual agents and neglecting the networks.
While Jiun-Yu Liu’s article in this SI takes a bird’s eye view and analyzes the complexities of larger exchange networks, it also discusses the role of small groups of specialized craftspeople in these networks. Tomas Larsen Høisæter’s article demonstrates the crucial role of small local nodes in larger exchange networks. While acknowledging the importance of larger networks, Høisæter shows that the networks themselves are created and sustained by local communities. Matthew Cobbs’s article, similarly, focuses on the neglected role of individual agents from India, such as sailors and merchants, in the Indian Ocean trade, as well as the role of local sea and inland networks. Jeremy Simmons’ article moreover analyzes individuals, corporate trading groups, and communities, and states as ‘players’ in the ‘game’ of long-distance trade, thereby finding a middle ground between ascribing globalization either to individual agency or to networks.
In a similar fashion, this article has sought to demonstrate that globalization can be understood as the result of both personal and group agency as well as the function of larger networks of exchange. As the case of the cakravartin Aśoka demonstrates, individual agency can, in fact, play a significant role in historical processes such as globalization. At the same time, the role of networks must not be underestimated; it is quite likely that Aśoka’s global aspirations would have been far less successful had he not been able to utilize pre-existing trade and social networks of exchange in order to promote Buddhism. But as the case of the bodhisattva ideology demonstrates, globalization is not always dependent on identifiable individual agency, or on a single centre from which change spreads. I have attempted to show, however, that no matter what the role of larger networks or individual agency may be, ideology and shared practice can play a crucial role in formulating a new global identity.
Signe Cohen is Associate Professor of Asian religions at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, United States. She received her MA in Sanskrit from the University of Oslo and her PhD in Sanskrit from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of The Upaniṣads: A Complete Guide (Routledge, 2018, winner of a Choice outstanding academic title award) and the author of Text and Authority in the Older Upaniṣads (Brill, 2008), and numerous articles on Asian religions, comparative religions, and Sanskrit philology.
