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Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, Ca. 1070-1215
Hardcover
Series: Gender and Power in the Premodern World
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ISBN13: 9781802703092
Publisher: ARC Humanities Press
Published: Feb 28 2026
Pages: 280
Weight: 1.35
Height: 0.88 Width: 6.07 Depth: 9.14
Language: English
The early second millennium was a pivotal moment in the history of Theravāda Buddhism. Religious reforms carried out at Poḷonnaruva, then-capital of Sri Lanka, shaped the latter course of Buddhism across South and Southeast Asia. However, our understanding of these reforms has been over-determined by retrospective accounts written by male monastics, who focused on the heroic deeds of male monarchs.
This book offers a radical revision of this narrative. Drawing on textual, inscriptional, numismatic, and material evidence from within the period itself, it reveals how the intellectual and social histories of Buddhism, politics, and gender were inextricably intertwined in Poḷonnaruva. In particular, it argues that debates over what it meant to be a good Buddhist king were intrinsically debates about Buddhist masculinity and about the proper relationship of gender to power.
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