CRASSH

Why is it that the rulers of some societies could convert to monotheism and retain or even enhance their authority, while elsewhere rulers knew that conversion would spell the end of their political legitimacy? In Sub-Saharan Africa, Island Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, there was often the potential for rulers to convert and oversee the conversion of their subjects. In mainland Eurasia, by contrast, such projects of 'top-down conversion' were doomed to fail. I have suggested that this reflects the way in which the mainland Asian societies had deeply rooted 'transcendentalist' traditions. 'Transcendentalist' traditions are those which have as their objective an ultimate ineffable state of being; religious life thus revolves around the concepts of truth, salvation and ethics. These traditions seem to wind themselves so tightly around conceptions of political legitimacy that exclusivist conversion becomes profoundly problematic. Elsewhere, relationships with the supernatural sphere were conducted on a quite different basis , such that the term 'religion' loses some of its value - while conversion became a real possibility. I shall try to flesh this out a little with regard to South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. It is more difficult to apply this schema to East Asia. Here, I think it may turn out to be crucial that China had an 'Axial Age' moment of philosophical revolution (generating a 'great tradition' of literacy, second-order thinking, and explicit ethics), which was yet not allowed to fundamentally re-structure religious life.