ABSTRACT
In July 1999, the Buddhist Association of Sipsongpanna ratified a list of rules for the monks of Sipsongpanna, a Theravada Buddhist minority region of Southwest China. While politically Sipsongpanna was a buffer state that became the southern edge of the Chinese nation-state/geo-body, in many ways it should be seen as a Southeast Asian polity. Throughout the Sipsongpanna Chronicle, and in particular during the reigns of the latter few centuries, new jao phaendin either performed ceremonies in front of Buddha images or sponsored the construction of new chedi or wat. In this chapter, the author noted an important shift in the Sipsongpanna Sangha in the last 50 years, one that is largely the result of a colonial relationship with China. There is an important difference between the shift taking place here and in other Theravada polities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
