Contesting Buddhist Narratives The Pali word sasana refers broadly to the Buddhist religion, but it should also be understood as including the entire Buddhist community (of monks, nuns, and laypeople) and the Buddha’s teachings themselves. For Theravada Buddhists, this includes the texts of the Pali canon, as well as the vast commentarial literature and the lived knowledge of those teachings among Buddhists. The sasana is critically important; without it, enlightenment would be impossible. Over the centuries in Theravada Buddhist–influenced kingdoms, political and religious elites cultivated a worldview in which the health of the religion and the strength of the polity were seen as interdependent. Defending Buddhism, therefore, requires not only protecting the integrity of the state, but also ensuring that the state and its leaders create an environment conducive to the well-being of the religion. Similarly, in this frame, protecting the Burmese nation requires solidifying Buddhism as its primary moral touchstone and, to a certain degree, as the ideological infrastructure for the state. One of the earliest accounts of violence in defense of the sasana is of the Sinhalese king, Dutthagamani, who defeated a Tamil king in approximately the first century BCE in Sri Lanka, declaring that his purpose was not to win territory but to protect the sasana.22 According to the sixth-century Sinhalese Buddhist text the Mahavamsa, monks allegedly disrobed in order to join his army and fight for the Buddhist cause. When Dutthagamani experienced remorse at the bloodshed he had caused, he was visited by eight arahants (fully enlightened beings) who assured him that there was no need to worry. Only one and a half “people” had died at the hands of his army: one who had taken the Five Precepts (and who could be considered Buddhist) and one who had taken a lesser vow. The rest, according to the exceptionally authoritative voices of these arahants, were all non-Buddhists, less than human and not even deserving of consideration, let alone pity. The Burmese Buddhist King Bodawphaya argued that his intention in conquering the Arakanese kingdom of Mrauk U in 1785 was for the purpose of “purifying” the sasana (Leider 2008). While the Arakanese were also Buddhist, their kingdom maintained close ties with Islamic sultanates to the west and adopted some cultural and political traditions from them. For Bodawphaya, the “defense of the sasana” was carried out through a violent, expansionist policy, in this case conducted against co-religionists. 21