Contemporary political struggles—from the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts to Tibetan exiled protests against the Chinese government—frequently invoke religious traditions in their claims to sovereignty. Departing from the present, this panel takes a historical perspective to examine past moments where religion played a fundamental role in shaping sovereignty. Rather than defining religion primarily through belief or theology—a tendency rooted in Protestant tradition—we focus on religious traditions where embodied ritual practices are paramount to scholasticism and dogmatism. We seek to examine ritualistic aspects, which informed the interplay between the religious sphere and sovereignty across premodern Asia. However, we do not assume “ritual” as a given category universal to the Asian sources we examine. Instead, we hope to localize and historicize the concept by asking: What were the local terms, texts, practices, events, or spaces that bring our concept of “ritual” into focus? What were the expected or actual functions of those encompassed components when assembled in their specific contexts? On the basis of that, the instrumental of ritual to sovereignty in the cases we examine can be defined in two aspects: one is linking sovereign power to the sacred, and the other regards ritual’s performativity. Building upon A. Azafar Moin’s (2011) emphasis on performative aspects of sacral kingship in his research of Mughal India, we highlight that sovereignty, far from a standing-alone, self-contained power, is a continued dialogue between the ruling house and their audience—whether domestic imperial subjects or intra-polity competitors, and ritual provides a means of communication for all the actors. Together, this panel addresses central questions at large: When and why would ruling houses adopt certain rituals? How did these rituals connect to their imagination and practices of sovereignty?

As an interdisciplinary panel, we convene scholars trained in various fields—including history, art history, and religious studies—who work with sources in different languages and cover a broad geographical range across Asia (Iran and Eurasian, Tibet, Southwest China, Japan) from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. We pay particular attention to the appropriation/instrumentalization of rituals by the kings or clergy for imperial purposes and the rituals that imbued worldly power with sacred kingship. With multidisciplinary approaches, each of the four papers touches on themes as diverse as ritual materiality and court cults, ritual performativity and imperial audience. Papers also address the role of various ritual subjects, including the kings, clergy, and other non-human beings, in co-constructing the theo-political authority. By including both human and non-human agents—such as institutional clergy, the invoked deities, and the material objects embodying their forces—we introduce new analytical categories for historically conceptualizing the mystification and ethicization of sovereignty, which are often left out by modern, secular perspectives but are central to historical understandings of sovereignty and its sacralization. Collectively, by introducing new insights from ritual studies in conversation with an emerging discussion on the Asian-form of sacred sovereignty, this panel offers fresh perspectives to the field of comparative sovereignty, where the non-West contexts remain less explored.