Lord Buddha comes to Arakan : Relics, Statues and Predictions
Investigating the political and social meanings of an apocryphal Arakanese Phaya-Samaing
Jacques P. Leider,
Arakan (or Rakhaing) is today a state of the Union of Myanmar. Until its conquest by the Burmese in 1785, it was for several centuries an independent Buddhist kingdom. The presence of Buddhism can be traced back at least to the 6th century AD, but little is known in detail on Arakan’s religious and political history before the 15th century AD. For that reason, it is still difficult to ascertain the origins in Arakan of Theravada Buddhism that referred itself to the Sinhalese Mahavihara. For the moment, we may reasonably assume that the history of Theravada Buddhism in Arakan followed a similar course to what little we know on Burma’s early monastic history and it may go back to religious developments of the 12th and 13th centuries.The text on which this paper is based...
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