The lowland territories of Southeast Asia are composed of a variety of localities, each with its own physical and spiritual characteristics. As various realms formed across the region, growing political forces had to bring these scattered localities together under their central umbrellas in order to gain access to the resources, human and material, of these localities. In the process, emerging rulers had to deal with a great variety of local spiritual forces as the kings developed their central ideologies and royal cults. Here we examine the role of Buddhist monarchies in this process, focusing on Đại Việt and the reign of Lý Nhân-tông (r. 1072–1127) in Thăng-long (Hà Nội). Against the background of other Buddhist monarchies across Southeast Asia, we perceive Vietnamese kingship through its texts (chronicles, biographies, cult tales, inscriptions) and the variety of Buddhist temples that existed there.

MANDALAS AND LOCAL CULTS

I approach this study with the belief that localities varied in their characteristics and spiritual beliefs and need to be treated as scattered singular units interacting to greater or lesser degrees with each other. Dominance fluctuated among them depending on the contingencies of the time, human and material. Constructing hierarchies required the human ability to apply power and belief to these scattered localities, to link the localities to greater concentrations of resources and spiritually to the cosmos at large, to join them to the world of the royal court. Gradually, through the first millennium CE, out of these scattered localities there formed mandalas, cultural and political self-identifying groupings, that saw themselves opposed to other mandalas. We see this in terms, inter alia, of groupings called Việt, Champa, Kambujadesa, Rmannadesa, and Mranma across the mainland.

This pattern may be seen in the Khmer territory (as defined by inscriptions) through the middle of the first millennium. Michael Vickery has described the situation of localities there with their leaders, the pon and the mratan, and their spirits called kpon and kamratan. While, by the time these inscriptions appeared, there was already the beginning of an admixture of Indic elements in the local societies, the inscriptions do seem to reflect elements of the society that was receiving and accepting the new elements.