goods without which they could not survive, the for-
mer reciprocated through their command of super-
natural means. Among the early supporters of the
san ̇gha were the gahapati,land-based controllers of
property, who straddled the divide between the rural
and the urban, and also between the castes. Networks
were, in fact, crucial in the spread of Buddhism, and
merchant groups can be seen as constituting networks
that compensated for the disappearance of the demo-
cratic tribal political structures, which were being ab-
sorbed by the large political entities then emerging in
northeastern India.
In terms of the affinity between asceticism and ac-
cumulation mentioned earlier one can say that the
Buddha’s misgivings about ritual, magical practices,
and materiality in general led necessarily to the rejec-
tion of the expenditures associated with ritual activi-
ties, a rejection that freed capital for investment. An
example of this rejection of ritual and its replacement
by an internalized religion can be found in the
Sigalaka-suttaof the Dlghanikaya.When the Buddha
sees Sigalaka engaging in ritual behavior, he tells him
that instead of doing that he should abandon the four
defilements, avoid doing evil from the four causes, and
avoid following the six ways of wasting one’s substance.
Avoiding these fourteen evil ways involves essentially
having an internalized approach to religion, as well
as living a disciplined life, away from material and
moral dissipation. We see this approach to religion in
nineteenth-century Thailand, where King Mongkut
sought to reform the san ̇gha by purifying it from su-
perstitious practices and promoting scriptural learn-
ing, thus becoming a proponent of a “protestant”
approach to Buddhism. We find the same protestant
ethos in the Vietnamese Hoa Hao movement’s rejec-
tion of wasteful ritual and concomitant internalization
of religion, as well as in the contemporary Thammakai
movement, a Buddhist sect popular among the Thai
middle class.
Entrepreneurship, worldly and otherworldly
Both as centers of entrepreneurship and innovation as
well as of ritual expenditure Buddhist monasteries have
functioned as loci of economic activity. In Tibet and
in China, pawnshops, mutual financing associations,
auctions, and the sale of lottery tickets originated or
had close connections with monasteries. In addition,
during the Tang dynasty (618–907) Buddhist monas-
teries engaged in oil production for cooking and for
votive lamps, and in running water-powered stone
rolling-mills. More directly related to economic ex-
pansion was the role of monasteries in bringing new
land into cultivation, as well as in causing deforesta-
tion. Equally significant has been the role of Buddhist
monasteries in the emergence of an autonomous eco-
nomic domain, as well as the domain of the corpora-
tion, which were caused by the separation between the
wealth of the institution and that of the individual.
What the monasteries have had in common is their
function as spaces for giving and receiving, DANA(GIV-
ING), a function that has been held in high regard
throughout the history of Buddhism. Ultimately, dana
consists in giving oneself, as AS ́OKAdid during the great
quinquennial festival, and as Emperor Wu of the Liang
dynasty (502–557) in China did on more than one oc-
casion, having to be rescued at great expense to the im-
perial treasury. In many cases, however, instead of
functioning as the vehicle for the surrender of oneself,
danaserved as conspicuous waste, a process whereby
wealth and position could be both demonstrated and
solidified. The consequences of this giving were most
damaging in China, as the use of corvée labor to build
extravagant monasteries inflicted misery on peasants.
Analogous developments took place in Southeast Asia.
In Cambodia, beginning around 800 C.E., rulers or-
dered the building of increasingly larger ceremonial
complexes in Angkor; these originally served as cen-
ters for the management of irrigation until they
reached its saturation point in the thirteenth century.
In Myanmar (Burma) the construction of temples was
initiated by both rulers and ordinary people, but the
effects were similar: Vast amounts of wealth were di-
verted from productive to sumptuary uses, and the tax-
exempt status of ever increasing religious property had
negative economic consequences, as ritual expendi-
tures inhibited the accumulation of capital necessary
for development.
Even when it did not reach the excesses of medieval
China, Cambodia, or Myanmar, the ideology of dana
has generally had important economic consequences,
as consumption by monks has hampered the process
of internal differentiation and of capital accumulation.
On the other hand, because of the fact that in a col-
lective celebration merit is shared but prestige is not,
the richest families, being able to contribute the most,
accumulate the most prestige. This means that even
though, from the point of view of MERIT AND MERIT-
MAKING, we encounter a nonzero-sum game situation,
in the context of prestige the monastery as recipient
of dana legitimizes social differences, and rendersECONOMICS