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Buddhist Traditions about a Perfect Society, Its Decline and the Origin of the State

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Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution

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Abstract

In Buddhist perspective, history develops in cyclical sequence. To the beginning of the present World Age Buddhist tradition attributes a blissful state of perfect society before human beings had fallen into the Illusion of the Self and thereby lost their original perfection. This was thought to have caused the social imperfections that legislation was meant to remedy. And Burma’s main codification of regulative and punitive law, the so-called Burmese Code “of Manu,” came to be prefaced by a narrative about this primeval ideal social order and its loss through human delusion: “From then on, the people of the beginning World Age spoke thus, ‘before that time we excelled by means of our state of mind. Joy excelled, before such things came to pass. The bodies shone as the firmament... a tasty thin soil offered itself [for food]. The sweet creeper was eaten until it was exhausted. These foods disappeared because of [human] demerit.’”1 The same development towards the loss of the initial blissful state of man are preceding the dynastic narratives of the Burmese chronicle: “From that time onward, the people of the beginning World Era thus complained [with] dissatisfaction: The [human] bodies had been shiny and sparkling...

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Freiburg University, Germany

    E. Sarkisyanz Ph.D. (apl. Professor)

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  1. E. Sarkisyanz Ph.D.
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© 1965 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Sarkisyanz, E. (1965). Buddhist Traditions about a Perfect Society, Its Decline and the Origin of the State. In: Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6283-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6283-0_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-5830-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-6283-0

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