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• 1 2019-04-09T19:17:26-07:00 Theravada Buddhism 9 plain 2019-06-11T20:11:58-07:00 Theravada Buddhism is the designation for a religious tradition that is practiced with a great many local variations by more than 150 million people around the world. Today, the practice of this branch of Buddhism extends to Yunnan in southwestern China, to parts of Vietnam, Indonesia, Nepal, among Dalits in India, and throughout diaspora networks in Europe, North America, and Australia. In Buddhist communities in all of these places, local and modern articulations of ancient Buddhist tradition are changing rapidly in the context of globalization. 
  
  Example: Wikipedia Map of Spread of Buddhism
  
  
  Map: Buddhist expansion, from the Buddhist heartland in northern India (dark orange) starting in the sixth century BCE, to the Buddhist majority realm (orange) and the historical extent of Buddhism influences (yellow). Mahāyāna (red arrow), Theravada (green arrow), and Tantric-Vajrayana (blue arrow).
  
  The spread of Theravada Buddhism during the second millennium is closely associated with the rise of classical Buddhist kingdoms that developed in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Theravada Buddhism is a religion with distinctive social institutions, cultural practices, and a long history, during which it spread throughout South and Southeast Asia. Theravada Buddhist civilizations have flourished for many centuries in what are now the countries of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. There is therefore a long history of connections between Buddhism and politics. 
  
  The study of Theravada Buddhism relies on a textual tradition in Pali that is shared across much of mainland Southeast Asia. Since roughly the fifth century CE, Pali Buddhist inscriptions and texts deeply influenced the development of vernacular literatures and local cultural practices in what are now the modern nations of mainland Southeast Asia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Buddhist ideas, texts, and practices spread throughout an extensive social network that was supported by monks and lay people and that linked many places in Asia through trade, pilgrimage, and travel. 
  
  Stephen Collins has introduced the term Pali Imaginaire to describe not just this prestige language used by literati at royal courts, but also to encompass the range of ideas and values that form the fabric of its literatures. Indeed, Pali in South and Southeast Asia is one of the languages singled out by Benedict Anderson as exemplifying, in his view, the kind of linguistic translocal vehicle for imagining communities before modern nationalism. One can also argue that the Pali Imaginaire inspired national and vernacular languages like Burmese, Shan, Thai, etc. through Theravada Buddhist practices and texts. The Pali Imaginaire is therefore refracted in manuscripts, print, and digital communication technologies.