Religion of Monarchs

Chapter 6 examines the socio-historical practicalities of a monarch participating in the Tantric sphere. The twelfth-century chronicle Rājataraṅgiṇī offers a useful guide. Its narratives demonstrate how practitioners who have shed caste identity through initiation still retain it in the social world. It focuses largely on monarchs, disapproving of their participation in Tantric rites. The chapter discusses literary evidence that demonstrates the widespread agreement on what qualifies as prohibited and the penalties for transgressions. It discusses evidence of royal patronage before turning to specific rites related to the king. These rites include marking the body and food of the king with preventative ritual objects and mantras and large-scale rituals that protect everything under the king’s purview. The chapter contrasts these public or semi-public rituals with the private rituals to maintain the monarch’s health.

‘Het vooruitzigt op zijn toekomstig geluk’

Door pages op te nemen in zijn hofhouding bood Lodewijk Napoleon, koning van Holland (1806-1810), jonge zoons van de elite de mogelijkheid zich in een hoofse omgeving voor te bereiden op een carrière als legerofficier. Deze aloude junior functies waren gering in aantal en erg gezocht. Voor de koning vormden zij een van de middelen om zijn nieuw gecreëerde troon van legitimiteit te voorzien. Dit artikel bestudeert aan de hand van de pagebenoemingen de patronagerelatie tussen Lodewijk Napoleon en de vooraanstaande families in het koninkrijk. Een prosopografische analyse van de in totaal vijfentwintig pages laat zien hoe hij daarbij probeerde zo veel mogelijk geledingen binnen de verbrede en verbrokkelde elite recht te doen. Hoewel de korte duur van Lodewijks koningschap deze inspanningen uiteindelijk doorkruiste, blijkt de loyaliteit van de pages en hun families in veel gevallen zonder bezwaar te zijn overgegaan op het daaropvolgende keizerlijke bewind.By admitting pages into his household, King of Holland Louis Bonaparte (1806-1810) allowed upper class adolescents to be groomed for military careers in a prestigious environment. These traditional junior court positions, few in number and eagerly coveted, constituted one of the King’s instruments to bolster the legitimacy of his newly-created throne. This article examines royal patronage through the appointments of pages, considering Louis Bonaparte’s policies as well as the response of the country’s leading families. A prosopographical analysis of the total of twenty-five pages reveals how he sought to integrate as many sections of the kingdom’s broadened and fragmented elite as possible. Although the King’s efforts were eventually thwarted by the brevity of his reign, the allegiance of both the pages and their families proved in many cases to have been easily transferred to the succeeding imperial regime.

From symposion to goṣṭhī: The Adaptation of a Greek Social Custom in Ancient India

The symposion, a male social gathering that began in ancient Greece, was a social institution by and for men, hence a type of men’s society as we might understand it in modern parlance. Its manifestation on the Indian subcontinent has to date not been fully explored. In its original form, the symposion consisted of three main elements: alcohol, sex, and intellectual pursuits in the form of literature and philosophy, commonly understood by the popular phrase “wine, women, and song”. These sympotic elements find their equivalents in a wide range of Sanskrit litera­ture, which include medicine (Āyurveda), eroticism (Kāmaśāstra), polity (Arthaśāstra), epics, and rhetoric (Alaṃkāraśāstra), as expressed in the Carakasaṃhitā, the Kāmasūtra, the Arthaśāstra, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, and the Kāvyamīmāṃsā. The literary evidence indicates that the three sympotic elements came to full blossom in urban Indian men’s social gatherings or goṣṭhīs dating to a few centuries before the Common Era. The paper combines this literary evidence with archaeological sources to show how a foreign social custom contributed to an indigenous institution of men’s society in ancient India by a process of adaptation. It would appear that as the institution moved into different parts of the Indian subcontinent, it increasingly came under Brahmanic influence, which led to an important ideological change that stressed literary and intel­lectual pursuits over alcohol and sex. Under royal patronage, the goṣṭhī finally became a means for the development of Sanskrit and Indian literature and drama.

Let Praise of Aššur Not Be Forgotten: Temple Heterarchies and the Limits of Royal Patronage in the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Understanding how the numerous temples in the Neo-Assyrian Empire situated themselves within the imperial network is challenging, largely because of a bias in the official sources towards a few temples, especially that of Aššur. Revealing the relationships between the less-attested temples necessitates not only moving beyond the top of the hierarchy but also doing away with hierarchies almost entirely, as they both limit the possible connections and are impossible to build for the majority of known temples. Because there are myriad ways of organizing temples relative to one another, this paper proposes heterarchies as a more effective framework for understanding the changing dynamics of cultic landscapes. This study uses royal patronage (or its absence) as its barometer, establishing a typology that ranges from temples operating entirely independently of imperial support to those that actively seek it, and demonstrating how heterarchies can expose different perspectives of power, status, and affinities amongst institutions. Ultimately, a heterarchical approach shows that the relationships established by royal patronage were not straightforward, homogenous, or stable, and that the ways in which temple and state interacted with one another affected both “vertical” and “horizontal” positioning of temples within the cultic landscape of the empire.

Divergent Destinies: The English Royal Colony of Tangier and the Island Settlement of Bombay, c. 1662-85

This article examines the progression of the two colonies which came to the English crown as a result of the Anglo-Portuguese marriage treaty of 1661, Tangier and Bombay. The years 1662-85 act as the border for this study, taking in the entire duration of Tangier’s existence as an English crown colony and Bombay’s emergence as a settlement of the East India Company. Whilst English Tangier was a noted failure in colonial terms, the long-term development of Bombay proved to be a major success for the British in the subcontinent. Whilst this study will examine these divergent fortunes in social, economic and military terms, questions will also be posed as to the role which royal and chartered trading company patronage played in the success of these two settlements. This in turn will feed into the ongoing debate surrounding global approaches to colonial expansion and empire, as well as demonstrate the benefits and limitations of royal patronage in colonial development.

Alteration of Spatial Pollution Compounds to Eutrophication Phenomenon of Small-Scale Area under Corona Virus Disease Circumstances

This research aims to study the alteration of spatial pollution compounds to the eutrophication phenomenon in water resources during the COVID-19 situation. Sixteen water resources were monitored to examine the impact of spatial pollution compound on eutrophication phenomenon discovered from the activities of the Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University under the Royal Patronage. The analytical parameters were DO, nitrite (NO2-), nitrate (NO3-), ammonia (NH3), phosphate (PO4-), and Total kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN) collected in three months (November 2020, January 2021, and March 2021). This research has presented the differences in water resource characters in three months and the positive impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on wastewater. The total nitrogen was highest in November 2020 when compared with that of in January and March 2021 because it was a ‘normal situation’ (no lockdown) in November. The student, officer, lecturer, and government visitors came to use the facilities of the university. The results of total kjeldahl nitrogen showed a high range during the working period. The effect of P was higher on the water bodies in November than January and March because in November was a normal situation (no lockdown). The N:P ratio showed different trends to the eutrophication phenomenon with nitrogen and phosphate. Therefore, a comparison between a situation with lockdown and no lockdown showed that the lockdown situation was environment friendly. Finally, the results also confirm an improvement in environmental quality, which happened when humans were absent, especially in coronavirus circumstances.

Portuguese Monarchs and Their Royal Convents and Monasteries, Early Renaissance-Manueline

Following the pattern in vogue during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the religious architecture policy followed by the Portuguese kings was based on the construction of buildings. This approach unsurprisingly sought to respond to the growth of religious orders in the kingdom and simultaneously served as a mirror of magnificence and royal power. In order to make the construction sites of such buildings more successful, working procedures such as the direction of general work, how the tasks were divided, and how workers were paid needed an in-depth but careful adjustment. The royal patronage around the Mendicants (mainly Dominicans and Franciscans) throughout the 15th century appeared to be dominant. At the end of the century, during the reign of King Manuel I, the tendency was to favor and support instead the Hieronymites, a contemplative and intellectual religious order, responsible for spreading the Devotio Moderna and a reformist spirit centered on Erasmus. The Monastery of Batalha, the Monastery of Jesus of Setubal, and the Monastery of Jerónimos are three representative sides of an architectural strategy where power and spirituality mix in the interior and exterior of buildings that fortunately still remain.