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From Indra to Maitreya: Buddhist Influence in Vietnamese Political Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2002

Nguyen The Anh
Nguyen The Anh
Affiliation:
The École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. 24 rue d'Ustaritz, 31240 L'Union, France, nguyen.theanh@wanadoo.fr.
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Abstract

Until the fifteenth century, Vietnam was essentially a Buddhist country. The piety of the dynasties constituted their source of legitimacy, and Buddhism provided a means for royal authority to penetrate and incorporate the local political structure. In the face of the development of social unrest, however, Confucian literati started to voice their concern for the maintenance of order and eventually emerged in the fifteenth century as spokesmen for royal authority, definers of public morality and guardians of the court. As a result, institutional Buddhism lost the court patronage it had previously enjoyed, and henceforth its political influence declined steadily.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , June 2002 , pp. 225 - 241
Copyright
© 2002 The National University of Singapore

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