The Power of the Buddhas: The Politics of Buddhism During the Koryŏ Dynasty (918–1392) should be read by scholars of Chinese and Japanese religion and pre-modern history as well as by all who study Korea's histories. Sem Vermeersch departs from the common emphasis on doctrinal analysis and focuses instead on “Buddhism's place in the body politic of Koryŏ.” In his broader argument, Vermeersch deflates the common characterization of Koryŏ Buddhism as state-protection Buddhism, which the South Korean state had encouraged in the 1960s and 1970s, and identifies more complex interactions between state and religion. He argues that the Koryŏ state secured the support of the various Buddhist schools by providing means to status and to power for monks.

The author divides his detailed explorations into three sections. In the first section he provides historical background from the late Silla period and introduces the Koryŏ founder Wang Kŏn's deployment of Buddhism in legitimizing the new government. In the second he treats the Koryŏ state's institutionalization of Buddhism, the state's management of monks, and institutional aspects of temples. And in the third he examines the economic power of temples and Buddhism's roles in state rituals. In these discussions Vermeersch utilizes the dynastic history Koryŏsa (“History of Koryŏ”), literary collections, and epigraphical documents such as epitaphs and stelae. He engages deeply with South Korean and Japanese scholars. Further, he refers to precedents and practices in China and Japan. Of special benefit to Koreanists will be the forays back into the Silla period to describe continuities and transitions in policy, and the biographical abstracts for seventy-six monks active in the Koryŏ period.

In the late Silla period, the court in Kwangju held little sway over powerful local elites, who took advantage of that space to provide patronage for nearby temples. This enabled the monks of the nine (or more) Sŏn (C. Chan; J. Zen) mountains to distance themselves from earlier state support. Establishing some degree of administrative control over the temples was one of Wang Kŏn's early projects. It is to the first century of Koryŏ that Vermeersch focuses most of his attention.

As Wang Kŏn and officials deployed Confucian concepts to legitimize his rule and the new government, they turned to Buddhism to bolster symbolic dimensions of legitimacy. In the founder's “Ten Injunctions”, the first, second, and sixth points touched upon Buddhism's relationship with the new state. The first injunction was particularly important, as it emphasized the ruler's piety and goodwill. In another maneuver, the new government reproduced Silla's “Three Treasures”, these being a nine-story pagoda, a large Golden Buddha, and the jade belt from Heaven. The P'algwanhoe (Eight Prohibitions Festival) ritual, too, continued Silla practices through its attention to the spirits of mountains and rivers. Here Vermeersch strengthens recent trends in stressing that Koryŏ was a pluralist society. The Koryŏ ruler did not monopolize ritual power, a point which highlights the roles of royal preceptor and state preceptor as representatives of the bodhisattva in state ritual. Their mediation enabled the depiction of the king as “a just Buddhist monarch” and tempered the efforts of those who sought to more closely emulate the Chinese emperor.

The Ten Injunctions did not express a state preference for either Sŏn or doctrinal Buddhism, and Wang Kŏn took a “pragmatic stance” toward them. But a preference for Sŏn schools was obvious. However, he did not coerce Sŏn schools into acceding to (incomplete) state control of temples. On the other hand, the monarch endeavored to move doctrinal schools to the new capital of Kaesŏng.

In the second section Vermeersch discusses how in extending power over the monkhood the Koryŏ government concentrated on ordination and the extension of laws over the Sangha. The state controlled ordination, including eligibility, and ensured that monks could be punished for misdemeanors. The former regulations permitted a son to become a monk only if the family had sufficient older brothers to meet its responsibilities for corvée and other taxes. Conversely, the state forbade people living in border areas and military lands from receiving tonsure and ordination.

The regulation of ordination broke down by 1170, though, and was not repaired. Men were moving to temples to avoid tax burdens; the state viewed them as only pretending to be monks. Not only the monkhood's privileged status but also their attire attracted such people. Complaints about real monks dressing too lavishly took twenty-five years to be translated into state codes. Leather shoes and silk gowns, for example, were forbidden. Some of those real monks may, perhaps, have been the sons of kings. Vermeersch shows that in the first decades of the new government more than one-half of the monks whose backgrounds can be confirmed were of the Silla royal family, though typically distant from the king. Until about 1170, most monks from the Koryŏ royal family were sons of kings, and often fared well in their careers.

The state's administrative system for monks derived from Chinese methods, but here too features and patterns unique to Koryŏ are readily visible. For example, staffing and promotion reflect a broader incorporation of practices typically linked with Confucianism. Prospective monks had to pass both a monastic examination (oral) and a civil service examination (written). The titles bestowed on monks depicted a hierarchy, with Sŏn schools superior to the Kyo (C. Jiao; J. Kyō) doctrinal schools. But from the second half of the tenth century, the state permitted transmission of the abbot position from master to disciple at three temples and appointed the abbot for all other temples, their terms being five or six years. The central government's office for overseeing monastic matters, though modeled upon Chinese practice, did not adopt “the underlying anti-Buddhist bias of the Chinese system.”

The royal preceptors and state preceptors, the second having been the more prestigious appointment, reflect Vermeersch's two principal lines of inquiry, the ideological role of Buddhism and Buddhism's position in the Koryŏ political system. The men who held these posts enjoyed great symbolic authority as the king's spiritual counterpart. He speculates that the first monarch's interaction with preceptors aided in the establishment of a bureaucracy for the temples and strengthening of royal authority. The preceptors, in part through the state rituals they performed, “came to embody the dynasty's reliance on Buddhism.”

In the third section, the author takes up the temple economy and Buddhist state rituals. Vermeersch offers a clear introduction to the complexities of defining and identifying temple land in the Koryŏ period, and then concentrates on land donations. The first king's donations became precedents to which later monarchs turned in pursuing their own agendas. Successors presented public lands grants, which, like donations, subsequently could be withdrawn. These transfers of public lands to temples or of lands from one temple to another “mostly constituted the legalization of lands.” That is, lands in former Silla territory may have entered Koryŏ with unclear distinctions between Silla royal holdings and a temple's private holdings. He concludes that temples in Koryŏ were “de facto owners” of their lands. Meanwhile, the construction of new temples, which Wang Kŏn's second injunction had sought to deter, followed upon confirmation that the site was geomantically sound and the temple beneficial to the country.

Regarding Buddhist ritual, Vermeersch is interested in “the ritualizing effect of Buddhism in the context of social behavior” rather than in the isolated ritual event, and in rituals with a clear role for the state, especially those for enthronement and consecration. The Lantern Festival (K. Yŏndŭnghoe) saw the monarch worship his ancestors in two places and offer lanterns, the latter to obtain merit for himself and his subjects. A second group of rituals sought to influence events beyond the ruler's control. Most important was the Humane Kings assembly (K. Inwanghoe), a ritual intended to protect the country from foreign invasion and other concerns. Kings were worshipped at a state hall where their portraits were preserved. The state also built temples for kings, and moved the portraits to the temple's portrait hall several generations after the monarch's death. In addition, temples in the provinces held royal memorial portraits, almost certainly to replicate there too the ruler's imprint. The rituals, as he shows throughout the chapter, reflected the influence of Confucianism upon the Koryŏ state and the heterogeneous influences upon Buddhism in Silla and Koryŏ.

Constrained by sources that often are terse, such as Koryŏsa, which the Chosŏn government compiled, Vermeersch carefully considers information as he presents his views and larger argument in this institutional history of Buddhism and the Koryŏ state. The author also exhibits his comfort with intellectual history in the deft references to Buddhist texts when discussing the underpinnings of royal authority. One hopes that The Power of the Buddhas will spark more research into the institutional and political history of Buddhism in the Koryŏ and Chosŏn periods. To reiterate, this book will be valuable for scholars focused on China or Japan, especially those who are interested in the Tang and Song periods, and the Kamakura period, as well as for Koreanists.