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The award committee agreed to honor this book for its distinctive contribution to our understanding of the role of Buddhism in the politics and society of Koryo and its comparative potential for scholars of China, Japan, Southeast Asia, medieval Europe, and anyone wishing to explore the relationship between state and religion in pre-modern societies. In reaching this decision for the first year of the Palais Prize, the committee considered the importance of pre-modern studies for Korean Studies as a whole although the prize is certainly open to studies in all disciplines and time periods.
This book is an extraordinarily well-conceived study of a difficult subject that in this form has been treated neither in a Western language nor in Korean. It presents a host of new insights based on as yet little studied source materials. The range and depth of Dr. Vermeersch’s research is astonishing, reflecting his special linguistic skills and unusual scholarly stamina to tackle the subject. While this book focuses on the relationship between the Koryo court and the Buddhist order, it is much more than a thorough examination of Buddhism and the state. It delves into Buddhism in the Silla period, Buddhist ritual, and the economics of Koryo Buddhism. Meticulous, insightful, and lucidly written, this book fills a vast gap in the scholarship on pre-Choson Korean history. It is the first extensive institutional history of pre-modern Korean Buddhism in English, and as such resonates with the rigorous institutional history that Palais pioneered in Korean studies.
Selection Committee: Seungsook Moon (Chair); Charles Armstrong; Martina Deuchler; David McCann.
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