Building Asia: Buddhist Kingship as a Basis for Defining Asia in Antiquity

Recorded: April 11, 2025
Event: Whither Global Antiquity? Retrospection and Future Directions
Citation: Balkwill, Stephanie. “Building Asia: Buddhist Kingship as a Basis for Defining Asia in Antiquity,” Global Antiquity: Whither Global Antiquity (April 11, 2025).

by Stephanie Balkwill (University of California, Los Angeles)

In this presentation, I put forth the theory that much of what we know as Asia today was conceived of as a contiguous whole as early as the 6th century and that instantiations of Buddhist kingship provided the points of contact between diverse polities across the region. Taking the Northern Wei empire (386–534 CE) as a case study—a polity that was formed and governed by Taghbach peoples from Inner Asia but which founded its capital deep in the Central Plains of China—I will argue that rising empires in East Asia supported institutions of Buddhist kingship as a means of consolidating power over their multi-ethnic citizenry while also enabling their relations with foreign empires and polities. In short, I will highlight processes of the transference of Buddhist kingship across South, Central, and East Asia, showing that enduring connections in the means and ideologies of governance existed between these ethnically, culturally, and linguistically divergent areas to the extent that we can talk about a shared repertoire of Buddhist statecraft that has been, perhaps, the salient defining feature of Asia since Antiquity.

About the Speaker

Stephanie Balkwill is Associate Professor of Chinese Buddhism at UCLA, where she is also the Director of the Center for Buddhist Studies. Exploring the relationship between Buddhism and the state in East Asia between the 4th and 6th centuries, her research utilizes epigraphy and material culture alongside Buddhist literature and court-produced historical texts. Her recent monograph The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century (University of California Press, 2024) argues that women were active producers of Buddhist culture between the 4th and 6th centuries and that, in turn, Buddhist ideas, images, and texts provided women leaders with a paradigm for rule that allowed them to take direct power as sovereigns.