Exorcising the Body Politic

The Lion’s Roar, Köten Ejen’s Two Bodies and the Question of Conversion at the Tibet-Mongol Interface

Authors

  • Matthew King University of California, Riverside

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.43215

Keywords:

Sakya Paṇḍita, Köten Ejen, conversion

Abstract

This study examines thirteenth to twentieth century Tibetan and Mongolian monastic memorializations of the bodily violence enacted upon Köten Ejen at the center of the “Buddhist conversion of the Mongols.” Koten Ejen (Tib. Lha sras go tan rgyal po, 1206–1251) was Chinggis Khan’s grandson and a military leader involved in Mongol campaigns against the Song Dynasty and against Buddhist monasteries in eastern Tibet. In 1240, Koten famously summoned the Central Tibetan Buddhist polymath Sakya Pandita, by then already an old man, to his court at Liangzhou. Examining Tibetan and Mongolian accounts about their meeting from the last seven centuries, this study shows that it was neither compelling philosophy nor some turn of faith that converted the Mongols. It was, rather, Sakya Pandita’s violent therapeutic intervention into the space of Koten’s ill body that wrenched the Mongol body politic into the Dharmic fold.

Author Biography

  • Matthew King, University of California, Riverside

    Matthew King is Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies and Director of the Asian Studies program at the University of California, Riverside. His book Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing (Columbia University Press, 2019) was recently awarded the American Academy of Religion’s 2020 “Excellence in the Study of Religion: Textual Studies” book award and the Central Eurasian Studies Society’s 2020 “Best Book in History and Humanities.”

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Published

2021-07-28

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

King, M. (2021). Exorcising the Body Politic: The Lion’s Roar, Köten Ejen’s Two Bodies and the Question of Conversion at the Tibet-Mongol Interface. Buddhist Studies Review, 38(1), 45–57. https://doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.43215