5 - Buddhist Kingship in Premodern South Asia: A Case-Study of the Pāla Dynasty

In the premodern world, the figure of the king was identified with the state. Kings of the influential Pāla dynasty of eastern India (c. 8th-12th centuries CE) have been routinely characterized as Buddhist rulers in the historiography of ancient India. This paper critically examines this characterisation. The Pālas were indeed one of the last major royal patrons of Buddhism in eastern India before the onset of its staggered decline within a substantial part of the Indian subcontinent. The largest number of Buddhist mega-monasteries (mahāvihāras) in South Asia such as Nālandā, Somapura, Odantapuri and Vikramaśilā were located within the Pāla domain (corresponding to modern Bihar and West Bengal in India and northern Bangladesh), and Buddhist art (and to a lesser extent, architecture) of the Pāla domain had a significant trans-regional impact in parts of Southeast, East and Central Asia. But do all these add up to their qualification as Buddhist kings, and the Pāla kingdom as a Buddhist state? To what extent did Buddhist ideology influence Pāla conceptions of kingship? I try to answer these questions by examining the Pāla pattern of patronage and the rulers’ self-identification as represented in a category of material objects associated with the dynasty—a small corpus of copper plate charters issued by Pāla kings.