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Narratives of Buddhist legislation: Textual authority and legal heterodoxy in seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2012

D. Christian Lammerts
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Abstract

For more than a century scholars of central and western mainland Southeast Asia have sought to characterise the status of dhammasattha — the predominant genre of written law from the region before colonialism — and define its authority vis-à-vis Pali Buddhism. For some, dhammasattha texts represent a predominantly ‘secular’ or ‘customary’ tradition, while for others they are seen as largely commensurate with, if not directly derived from, the religio-political ideas of a cosmopolitan and purportedly canonical ‘Theravāda’. However, scholarship has yet to investigate the way that regional authors during the late premodern period themselves understood the character and legitimacy of written law. The present article examines seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burmese narratives concerning the genealogy and status of dhammasattha to advance a pluralist conception of the relationship between law and religion in Southeast Asian history. This analysis addresses a historical context where ideas concerning Buddhist textual authority were in the process of development, and where there were multiple and competing discourses of legal ideology in play. For elite monastic critics closely connected with royalty, dhammasattha stood in problematic relation to authoritative taxonomies of scripture, and its jurisprudence was seen to contradict authorised accounts of the origin and nature of Buddhist law; the genre thus required reform to be brought into alignment with what were construed as orthodox legal imaginaries. The principal hermeneutic move these monastic commentators performed to achieve this involved redescribing dhammasattha in light of such accounts as a variety of Buddhist royal legislation and written law as the prerogative of the Buddhist state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 118 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2013

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References

1 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was common for Burmese kings to sponsor the copying of a new edition of the Piṭakat during their reign. Compare, for example, a manuscript copied in 1640 that contains a detailed list of the contents of the Piṭakat prepared for such a project during the reign of King Thalun (fl. 1633–48), entitled Piṭakat mhan cā raṅḥ [Mirror of the Piṭakat] (Ministry of Religious Affairs, MS 4100). King Minye Kyaw-htin (fl. 1673–98) was involved in the sponsorship of at least two such projects, one which began in 1680 and was the likely catalyst for Uttamasikkhā's bibliography, another which concluded in 1695; his successor, King Sanay, ordered an investigation of the contents of the Piṭakat in 1699 shortly after taking the throne. See Kulāḥ, Ūḥ, Mahārājavaṅ krīḥ [Extended great chronicle of the lineage of kings] (rev. repr., Yangon: Rā praññ., 2006, 3rd. ed.), vol. 3, sections 278 and 304Google Scholar; Mhan nanḥ mahārājavaṅ tau krīḥ [Glass Palace chronicle of the lineage of kings] (rev. repr., Yangon: Ministry of Information, 2003), vol. 3, p. 298Google Scholar; Rājavaṅ lat [Middle chronicle of the lineage of kings] (Ministry of Religious Affairs, MS 8501), f. chyā(r). My thanks to Alexey Kirichenko for the latter reference.

2 Uttamasikkhā, Piṭakat samuiṅḥ [History of the Piṭakat] (Universities' Central Library, MS 9171), f. jhāḥ (r). My use of the term ‘canon’ as a gloss of Piṭakat is meant to signify those distinctive constructions of more or less restricted (‘open’ or ‘closed’) corpora of authoritative scripture invoked, argued, or critiqued in Burmese historical discourse. It is beyond the scope of the present article to describe at length the complex and changing nature of these discourses, which were ongoing since the thirteenth century, but see Alexey Kirichenko, ‘Classification of Buddhist literature in Burmese inscriptions and “Histories of pitakat”’ (Paper presented at the Eighth International Burma Studies Conference, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, 3–5 Oct. 2008).

3 ‘Dhammasat bedaṅ kalāp pañji vidag daṇḍi lokanīti’, Uttamasikkhā, Piṭakat samuiṅḥ, f. ññai(r). These refer to the dhammasattha and vedāṅga genres (on which see below), treatises on the Kātantra or Kalāpa system of Sanskrit grammar, as well as Burmese transmissions of Dharmadāsa's Vidagdhamukhamaṇḍana, Daṇḍin's Kāvyādarśa, the Lokanīti, and an uncertain ‘Pañjikā’ or ‘Pañcikā’, which is likely Ratnamati's Cāndravyākaraṇapañjikā, its sub-sub-commentary the Pañjikālaṃkāra (Candrālaṃkāra) by Sāriputta, or Trilocanadāsa's Kātantravṛttipañjikā — each of these three works of sakkaṭasadda (‘Sanskrit grammar’) are attested earlier in Burma.

4 Ibid.

5 The terms ‘Theravāda’ and ‘Mahāvihāra’ in reference to particular forms of precolonial Buddhism in Southeast Asia are unsatisfactorily imprecise. Neither of these words appear in precolonial Burmese discourse as a self-description of Buddhist identity; at best ‘Mahāvihāra’ is found, as in instances cited below, in contexts concerning monastic lineage. For recent criticism of this and related terminology, see Skilling, Peter, ‘Theravāda in history’, Pacific World, 3rd series, 11 (Fall 2009): 61–93Google Scholar; Skilling, Peter, Carbine, Jason A., Cicuzza, Claudio and Pakdeekham, Santi, How Theravāda is Theravāda? Exploring Buddhist identities (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2012)Google Scholar.

6 As Steven Collins has shown, it is appropriate to see the construction of early Mahāvihārin ideas about canon in such a light. It should come as no surprise that recent research suggests that conceptions of scriptural authority in late premodern South and Southeast Asian Buddhism varied considerably across the region, and it is instructive to keep this diversity in mind when considering the Burmese evidence. See Collins, Steven, ‘On the very idea of the Pali canon’, Journal of the Pali Text Society, 15 (1990): 89–126Google Scholar; Blackburn, Anne M., ‘Looking for the vinaya: Monastic discipline in the practical canons of the Theravāda’, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 22, 2 (1999): 281–309Google Scholar; Skilling, Peter and Assavavirulhakarn, Prapod, ‘Tripiṭaka in practice in the fourth and fifth reigns’, Manusya: Journal of the Humanities, special edition, 4 (2002): 60–72Google Scholar; McDaniel, Justin Thomas, Gathering leaves and lifting words: Histories of Buddhist monastic education in Laos and Thailand (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), pp. 193–7Google Scholar.

7 Following the Mahāvihārin commentators, such authors recognised that both the Pāḷi or mūla (root texts) of the Tipiṭaka and many of the commentaries (aṭṭhakathā) themselves were included in these recitations.

8 These principles agree with the cattaro mahā-apadesā or ‘four great authorities’ for determining the authentic credentials of a statement (and by extension a text) elaborated by Buddhaghosa and other Mahāvihārin commentators on vinaya. Takakusu, Compare J. and Nagai, M., Samantapāsādikā, 7 vols. (London: Pali Text Society, 1924–47), vol. 1, pp. 230–1Google Scholar. For an instructive discussion of the modes of reckoning scriptural authority in Indian Buddhism, including a detailed analysis of Mahāvihārin perspectives, see Skilling, Peter, ‘Scriptural authenticity and the śrāvaka schools: An essay towards an Indian perspective’, Eastern Buddhist, 41, 2 (2010): 1–47Google Scholar.

9 Dhammasat is the vernacular Burmese cognate of Pali dhammasattha. Throughout this article I employ the term dhammasattha in reference to the genre as a whole, or in reference to Pali or nissaya texts, while I reserve the term dhammasat for references to particular vernacular treatises. For a discussion of the early history of the transmission of this literature in Burma and mainland Southeast Asia, and its relationship with Indian and Insular Southeast Asian legal-literary traditions, see Lammerts, Dietrich Christian, ‘Buddhism and written law: Dhammasattha manuscripts and texts in premodern Burma’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, 2010), pp. 59–204Google Scholar.

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14 Compare, for example, Tambiah's claim that ‘[…] the canonical conception of first kingship acted as a charter and legitimator of legal systems and social practices of three major Buddhist societies of South and Southeast Asia — Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand’. Tambiah, Stanley J., ‘King Mahāsammata: The first king in the Buddhist story of creation, and his persisting relevance’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 20, 2 (1989): 115–16Google Scholar.

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16 Lieberman, Victor, Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c. 800–1830, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 137–9, 196–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 A similar argument has been made in reference to non-legal historical contexts in Keyes, Charles F., ‘Structure and history in the study of the relationship between Theravāda Buddhism and political order’, Numen, 25, 2 (1978): 156–70Google Scholar; see also, Collins, Steven, Nirvana and other Buddhist felicities: Utopias of the Pali imaginaire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 72–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Compare, among many others, Merry, Sally Engle, ‘Legal pluralism’, Law and Society Review, 22, 5 (1988): 869–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tamanaha, Brian Z., ‘Understanding legal pluralism: Past to present, local to global’, Sydney Law Review, 30 (2008): 375–411Google Scholar.

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20 This need to orient discussions of legal pluralism towards issues of conflict and premodern contexts has been suggested by Chiba, Masaji, ‘Other phases of legal pluralism in the contemporary world’, Ratio Juris, 11, 3 (Sept. 1998): 228–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Davis, Donald R. Jr, The spirit of Hindu law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; von Hinüber, Oskar, ‘Buddhist law according to the Theravāda-vinaya: A survey of theory and practice’, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 18, 1 (1995): 7–45Google Scholar.

22 Compare Mikaelian, Grégory, La royauté d'Oudong: Réforms des institutions et crise du pouvoir dans le royaume khmer du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2009)Google Scholar.

23 However, the Vaiṣṇava dharmaśāstra (c. sixth–eighth centuries CE) departs from the reticence of earlier texts by devoting relatively more space to the mythic origins of the law. See Olivelle, Patrick, The law code of Viṣṇu: A critical edition and annotated translation of the Vaiṣṇava-Dharmaśāstra (Harvard Oriental Series, 73; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

24 Maine, Henry S., Ancient law: Its connection with the early history of society and its relation to modern ideas (London: Oxford University Press, 1951 [1861]), pp. 17–36Google Scholar.

25 Lincoln, Bruce, Theorizing myth: Narrative, ideology, and scholarship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

26 An example of this type of approach is Huxley, Andrew, ‘When Manu met Mahāsammata’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 24, 6 (1996): 593–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 The identification of texts in this list raises a number of vexing problems, especially when compared with later eighteenth and nineteenth century dhammasattha bibliographies and surviving manuscripts. For more details see Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law’, pp. 27–54.

28 The current state of research suggests that this text is the earliest surviving Burmese dhammasat. One manuscript of the Dhammavilāsa states in its scribal colophon that it was copied in 1825 from a manuscript dated 1628 (British Library MS Or.Add 12249), f.jā(r). All other known manuscript versions were copied in the late eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.

29 Manosāra dhammasattha nissaya (National Library of Myanmar, MS Kaṅḥ 123); Manussika dhammasat (National Library of Myanmar, MS Kaṅḥ 119). The latter manuscript is incomplete and lacks a colophon and explicit attribution.

30 In the broadest sense a nissaya (literally, ‘support’) text is a bilingual commentary that works by way of an interverbal, interphrasal, or interlinear gloss on a Sanskrit or Pali or vernacular source text or portion thereof. Nissayas may also include sections called adhippāyas that give lengthy ‘explanations’ of the source text in the target language. Vernacular nissayas of Pali source texts are most common, but there are also Pali nissayas of Sanskrit source texts and Pali nissayas of vernacular source texts. In rare cases both the source text and gloss parts of a nissaya might be authored simultaneously, as in Kyok tuiṅ khuṃ [Judge of Kyauktaing], Kyok tuiṅ dhammasat [Dhammasat of Kyauktaing], written c. 1800 (Universities' Central Library, MS 13003). For an example of a Pali nissaya of a vernacular source text see Nandamālā (Chuṃ thāḥ sayadaw), Manu raṅḥ dhammasat nissaya [Nissaya of the original Manu dhammasat], written c. 1770 (Universities' Central Library, MS 8000), especially ff.ka–kā(r), discussed in Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law’, pp. 265–72.

31 Kuiṅḥ Cāḥ [Eater of Kaing Village] and Tipiṭakālaṅkāra, Manusāra-dhammasattha, written 1651 (British Library MS Or.Add 12241), f.kī(r), f.ko(r), f.kau(r). The Pali authorial colophons in the text that support this date and attribution are discussed at length in D. Christian Lammerts, ‘Scribal practices and the roles of manuscripts in Burmese legal culture: A preliminary study of variation across nineteen manuscript versions of the Manusāra-dhammasattha’, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting for the Association of Asian Studies, Honolulu, 31 Mar.–3 Apr. 2011.

32 Lak Vai Sundara, Dhammasat atui kok [Abridged dhammasat], written 1792 (Ministry of Religious Affairs, MS 4888), f.ka(v).

33 Trager, Frank N. and Koenig, William J., Burmese sit-tàns 1764–1836: Records of rural life and administration (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1979), p. 293Google Scholar.

34 Tun, Than, The royal orders of Burma, A.D. 1598–1885, 10 vols. (Kyoto: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, 1983–90), vol. 5, p. 435Google Scholar.

35 See, for e.g., Sīri-ujanā, Lokabyūhā kyamḥ [Treatise on the array of the world] (Yangon: Ministry of Culture, 2001), part sixGoogle Scholar.

36 Tun, Than, Khet hoṅḥ mran mā rājavaṅ [History of early Myanmar] (Yangon: Mahādaguṃ, 1969), p. 142Google Scholar.

37 Kuiṅḥ Cāḥ Manurājā [Manurājā, Eater of Kaing Village] and Tipiṭakālaṅkāra, Mahārājasat krīḥ [The extended great treatise on royal law], written c.1633–48 (National Library of Myanmar, MS 2016), f.ka–kā(v).

38 The following account of Tipiṭakālaṅkāra's biography is compiled from Uttamasikkhā (Ññoṅ caññ rhve kyoṅ sayadaw), Rhaṅ tisāsanadhaja anvay tau samaṇavaṃsa cā tamḥ [Account of the monastic lineage of Tisāsanadhaja], written c. 1706; Nandamālā, Sāsanasuddhidīpaka-pāṭha nhaṅ. nissaya [Treatise on the purity of the religion] (Yangon: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1980 [c. 1785])Google Scholar; Mahādhammasaṅkraṃ, Sāsanālaṅkāra cā tamḥ [Treatise on the adornment of the religion] (Yangon: Haṃsavātī 1956 [c. 1831])Google Scholar; and, Ca laṅ mrui. samuiṅḥ [History of Salin town] (Universities' Central Library, MS 8099). I have used several versions of Uttamasikkhā's text: a transcription by U Htun Yee from an unattributed manuscript (Yangon: Mran mā mhu bimān, c.1988), a transcription by Alexey Kirichenko (of National Library of Myanmar, MS kaṅḥ 85); and, National Library of Myanmar, MS kaṅḥ 85 itself. I stress that the reliability of all these accounts is uneven and that an adequate critical biography of Tipiṭakālaṅkāra remains to be written.

39 Ca laṅ mrui. samuiṅḥ, f.mo(r).

40 Than Tun, Royal orders, I 196–8; Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law’, p. 343.

41 Tipiṭakālaṅkāra, Vinayālaṅkāra-ṭīkā [Adornment of the vinaya], 2 vols. (Yangon: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1984), vol. 2, p. 434Google Scholar.

42 Uttamasikkhā, Treatise (National Library of Myanmar, MS kaṅḥ 85), f.ge(r), f.go(v).

43 Ibid., f.kai(v).

44 On this text, see Masami, Harada, ‘The importance of Burmese Buddhist literature: Yasavaḍḍhanavatthu (The story of increasing glory)’, Journal of Pali and Buddhist Studies, 14 (2000): 27–41 [in Japanese]Google Scholar; Masami, Harada, ‘The practical interpretation of canonical texts with reference to yasa in the Burmese Yasavaḍḍhanavatthu’, Journal of Pali and Buddhist Studies, 16 (2002): 97–108 [in Japanese]Google Scholar.

45 The several manuscripts of the Manusāra used as the basis for the following account are: British Library, MS Or.Add 12241; Ministry of Religious Affairs, MS 95; Ministry of Religious Affairs, MS 9421; Universities' Central Library, MS 5440; Universities' Central Library, MS 105682; Universities' Central Library, MS 9183; National Library of Myanmar, MS Taṅ 10.

46 From Ministry of Religious Affairs, MS 95, ff.ka(r)–ki(v), which follows most manuscripts; the text enclosed in braces are variants found only in parallel locations in a single manuscript, Universities' Central Library, MS 9183.

47 In both Pali and Burmese vajira (and its vernacular cognate varajin) can be read as either ‘thunderbolt’ and ‘diamond’. In eighteenth and nineteenth-century Burmese cosmological treatises, ‘Diamond’ Mountain (vajira toṅ) is listed as one among the 210 mountains of the Himavanta, so-called because it is composed of diamonds and ‘shines forth in brilliant, lustrous rays’. See Nau, Rhve, Ādikappa kambhā ū kyamḥ [Treatise on the origin of the universe] (Yangon: Haṃsavātī, 1958), p. 39Google Scholar.

48 The reference here echoes a simile found in several locations in Pali literature, which compare beings overcome by desire to moths enticed (and hence destroyed by) fire. Compare ‘Tela-kaṭāha-gāthā’, ed. Gooneratne, Edmund R., Journal of the Pali Text Society, 1884: 49–68Google Scholar; Papañcasūdanī: Majjhimanikāyaṭṭhakathā of Buddhaghosācariya, vol. 1, ed. Woods, James H. and Kosambi, Dharmananda (London: Pali Text Society, 1922), p. 39Google Scholar.

49 This is likely the reason for the occasional transposition of the names Manusāra and Manosāra in certain manuscripts, and in other Burmese texts. According to the etymology given here the ‘Manu’ element of Manusāra's name is derived from Pali manu-ñña or Sanskrit mano-jña, literally ‘mind-knowing’ or ‘agreeable to the mind’, hence ‘pleasing’. For ‘Manosāra’ in this context, compare Universities' Central Library, MS 9183, f.ku(r).

50 In Burma, mantra generally refers to potent verses (gāthā), seed-syllables (bīja), or sections of text that when recited provide the reciter, auditor, or other designated recipient with certain powers or protections. Yantra (Burmese species of which include aṅḥ,, ca-ma, etc.) comprise graphical, calligraphic, or otherwise material representations of magical text, often written in cipher, which might be tattooed on the body, burnt, or ingested to bring about its effects. See Thomas Patton, ‘In pursuit of the sorcerer's power: Sacred diagrams as technologies of power’ (n.p., 2011). In premodern Burma the vedāṅga (Burmese bedaṅ), lit. ‘vedic branch sciences’, encompass texts and practices dealing with prophecy or astrology and, according to certain authors, also medicine, alchemy, and law.

51 Collins, Steven, ‘The discourse on what is primary (Aggañña-sutta)’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 21, 4 (1993): 345CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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53 Collins, Steven, ‘The lion's roar on the wheel-turning king: A response to Andrew Huxley's “Buddha and the social contract”’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 24, 4 (1996): 425–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Ñāṇavara, Abhidhān pāṭh nisya (Yangon: Tuiḥ cā, n.d. [c. 1746]), sections 226, 1054Google Scholar. Additionally, in Sanskrit dharmaśāstra literature the cognate maryādā is used to refer to ‘customary rules’. As Donald Davis has shown, the term played a crucial role in referring to ‘law’ in the legal culture of medieval South India, where it referred to the ‘“boundaries” of acceptable legal and religious behavior’ as determined by local authorities through the ‘selective appropriation of dharmaśāstra's judicial techniques, conceptual vocabulary, and even substantive rules’. Davis, Donald R. Jr, The boundaries of Hindu law: Tradition, custom and politics in medieval Kerala (Torino: Centro Piemontese di Studi su Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 2004), pp. 147–9, 164Google Scholar.

55 Kane, Pandurang Vaman, History of dharmaśāstra, 5 vols. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1930–62), vol. 1, pp. 287–8Google Scholar.

56 Compare Dhammavilāsa dhammasat (Universities' Central Library, MS 9926), ff. ka(v)–kā(r).

57 Although beyond the scope of the present essay, this representation of cosmic writing may point to the circulation of dhammasattha in contexts where the written word itself entailed certain potencies. As Andrew Huxley observes, in this sense written law may have ‘created its own legitimacy’ (Huxley, ‘Buddhism and law’, p. 75).

58 Milindapañho, ed. Vilhelm Trenckner (London: Williams and Norgate, 1880), pp. 3–4. Note that there are considerable variants among different Milinda textual traditions with respect to this passage, on which see Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law’, pp. 411–12.

59 Pollock, Sheldon, ‘The idea of śāstra in traditional India’, in Shastric traditions in Indian arts, 2 vols., ed. Dahmen-Dallapiccola, Anna L. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 17–26Google Scholar; Scharfe, Hartmut, Education in ancient India (Leiden: Brill, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Southeast Asia compare Reynolds, Craig J., Seditious histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian pasts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), chap. 10Google Scholar; Day, Tony, Fluid iron: State formation in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), chap. 3Google Scholar.

60 Justin McDaniel has recently made the point that past scholarship on Southeast Asian Buddhism has tended to displace the rubrics lokiya and lokuttara from their discursive contexts and repurpose them, quite problematically, as general binary paradigms that define opposing, tightly bounded, domains or ends of Buddhist practice or culture. This important critique should not diminish the fact that, as shown here, these idioms were vital to premodern Pali and vernacular debates about scriptural authority, genre, the status and classification of sciences, and law, and as such continue to call for careful historical and literary scrutiny. See McDaniel, Justin Thomas, The lovelorn ghost and the magical monk: Practising Buddhism in contemporary Thailand (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), pp. 113–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Ruegg, David Seyfort, Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel dans la pensée bouddhique de l'Inde et du Tibet (Paris: Collège de France, 1995)Google Scholar.

62 The Netti-pakaraṇa, with extracts from Dhammapāla's commentary, ed. Hardy, E. (London: Pali Text Society, 1902), pp. 161–4Google Scholar; Bond, George D., ‘The gradual path as hermeneutical approach to the dhamma’, in Buddhist hermeneutics, ed. Lopez, Donald S. Jr (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993), pp. 29–45Google Scholar.

63 Lokasāra pyuī [Verses on the essence of the world], ed. Ññvan, Charā [Hsaya Nyunt] (Yangon: Burma Research Society, 1931), p. 4Google Scholar.

64 Kan tau maṅḥ kyoṅḥ metta cā nhaṅ. toṅ tvaṅḥ maṅḥ kyoṅḥ aphre [The Epistle of instruction by the abbot of the royal monastery of Kandaw, with its commentary by the abbot of the Taungdwin royal monastery], ed. Cin, Phuiḥ [Hpo Sein] (Yangon: Haṃsāvatī, 1959), p. 2Google Scholar.

65 Ibid., pp. 81–2.

66 Taṅḥ, Ū [U Tin], Mran mā maṅḥ aup khyup puṃ cā tamḥ [Treatise on the administration of Burmese kings], vol. 3 (Yangon: Government Printing, 1970), pp. 122–5Google Scholar.

67 For references see s.v. ‘Moṅḥ thoṅ ñāṇābhivaṃsa’, in Ññvan, Moṅ Moṅ [Maung Maung Nyunt], Mran mā nuiṅ ṅaṃ pāḷi nhaṅ. piṭakat cā pe samuiṅḥ sac [New history of Pali literature transmitted in Myanmar] (Yangon: Cā pe bimān, 2003)Google Scholar; Ññvan, Moṅ Moṅ [Maung Maung Nyunt], Rheḥ khet pran mā cā pe chuiṅ rā kyamḥ myāḥ le. lā mhu [Premodern Burmese literary treatises] (Yangon: Cā pe bimān, 2008)Google Scholar.

68 Ñāṇābhivaṃsa, Ameḥ tau phre [Answers to royal questions] (Mandalay: Jambū. Mit Chve, 1961), p. 172Google Scholar.

69 Jīmūtavāhana's Dāyabhāga: The Hindu law of inheritance in Bengal, ed. and trans. Rocher, Ludo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 16Google Scholar.

70 Other texts from this period also attribute dhammasattha to human authorship. In a response to King Alaunghpaya thirty years earlier, the monk Atulābhivaṃsa Shin Yasa stated that ‘treatises on bedaṅ, prediction, dhammasat, and prophecy are a product of human convention (loka-saṅketa)’. According to Atula, these discourses (ca kāḥ) differ from Buddhavacana, which is the product of Buddhas and contains an ultimate truth, inasmuch as their truth is manmade and therefore relative. Nanḥ cañ pucchā [Royal questions], ed. Jaṅ, Ū Sau (Yangon: Cā pa lve, 1970), pp. 72–5Google Scholar.

71 See Dīgha nikāya, vol. 1, ed. Davids, T.W. Rhys and Carpenter, J.E. (London: Pali Text Society, 1890), p. 104Google Scholar; Vimānavatthu-aṭṭhakathā, p. 246.

72 On Letwe Naurathā see Sutesī ta ūḥ [U Htun Yee], ‘Lak vai naurathā e* bhava nhaṅ cā pe’ [Letwe Naurathā: His life and literary work], in Maṅḥ lak vai naurathā [Letwe Naurathā] (Yangon: Burma Translation Society, 1975), pp. 179–300Google Scholar; Kaung, U Thaw, ‘Letwe Nawrahta (1723–1791), recorder of Myanmar history’, Myanmar Historical Research Journal, 21 (June 2011): 63–105Google Scholar. Ñāṇālaṅkāra was a prolific author, grammarian, and commentator, who also wrote treatises related to alchemy and vijjadhāra practices. In the Manuvaṇṇanā pyui. dhammasat, a vernacular verse legal text written in 1759 by one of Ñāṇālaṅkāra's disciples, Boṅḥ laṅḥ Ñāṇasaddhamma, he is described as ‘learned in all the tipiṭaka and lokiya treatises’ (Universities' Central Library, MS 6762), f.ghau(r).

73 Ñāṇālaṅkāra, Lak vai nau rathā lhyok thuṃḥ [Questions of Letwe Naurathā] (Yangon: Haṃsāvatī, 1963), p. 51Google Scholar.

74 Ibid., p. 100.

75 Mum rveḥ charā tau (Ādiccaraṃsī)[Monywe Sayadaw], Mhat cu [Notes] (Yangon: Haṃsāvatī, 1963), pp. ṭṭha–laGoogle Scholar.

76 Mum rveḥ charā tau (Ādiccaraṃsī) [Monywe Sayadaw], Samantacakkhu-dīpanī kyamḥ [Treatise on the all-seeing eye], 2 vols. (Yangon: Gandhamā, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 259Google Scholar.

77 He refers here by name to the following texts: Vinaya-pārājika-aṭṭhakathā, Visuddhimagga, Aṭṭhasālinī, Sammohavinodanī, Lokadīpaka[-sāra], Lokadīpanī, Candasūriyagatidīpanī, Cagatidīpanī, Sāratthadīpanī, Saratthasaṅgaha, Lokapaññatti, Lokuppatti, Jinālaṅkāraṭīkā, Kappavaṇṇanā, Kapasāra, Pavaramanobhirāma, Ananta leḥ pāḥ, Jinālaṅkāra, Lokavidū, and Visuddhimaggadīpanī.

78 Ādiccaraṃsī, Samantacakkhu-dīpanī kyamḥ, p. 268.

79 Ibid., pp. 268–72. In this translation I have omitted several lengthy sections where Ādiccaraṃsī provides Pali citations from the sources he invokes.

80 Here it is important to note, however, that certain early dhammasattha texts do recognise a limited legislative capacity of kingship. Dhammavilāsa, for example, maintains that the king has authority to make law, though only with respect to criminal matters concerning murder, injury, defamation, rape, and theft (Universities' Central Library, MS 9926, f.khī(v)).

81 Aung, U Hla, ‘The Burmese concept of law’, Journal of the Burma Research Society, 53, 2 (1969): 27–41Google Scholar.

82 Taylor, Robert, The state in Myanmar, 2nd ed. (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2009), p. 53Google Scholar.

83 Lammerts, D. Christian, ‘Genres and jurisdictions: Laws governing monastic inheritance in late premodern Burma’, in Buddhism and law: An introduction, ed. by French, Rebecca R. and Nathan, Mark A. (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

84 Thiphakorawong, Chaophraya, Phraratchaphongsawadan krung Rattanakosin ratchakan thi nung [Dynastic chronicle of the Rattanakosin era, the first reign] (Bangkok: Khrusapha, 1960), pp. 316–18Google Scholar. On this reform see Lingat, Robert, ‘Note sur la revision des lois siamoises en 1805’, Journal of the Siam Society, 23 (1929): 19–27Google Scholar; Wenk, Klaus, The restoration of Thailand under Rama I: 1782–1809 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), pp. 35–8Google Scholar.

85 Thiphakorawong, Phraratchaphongsawadan, p. 317; Lingat, ‘Note’, p. 24. More research is needed on the precise significance of ‘pāḷi’, which Lingat translates as ‘texte sacré’, within this context, though we can hypothesise that the discourse is comparable to Burmese conceptions of Piṭakat discussed above.

86 Kotmai tra sam duang chabap ratchabandit sathan [The laws of the Three Seals Code in the edition of the Royal Institute], 2 vols. (Bangkok: Royal Institute, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 122–66Google Scholar.

87 Lingat, Robert, The classical law of India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 270–2Google Scholar.