Buddhist Law

In the case of Muslims, though there may be different schools or sects, there is still one body of Islamic Law for all Muslims. The same applies to the body of Hindu Law for all Hindus. However, “Buddhist” is a much wider term and may be somewhat misleading in the context of law, as it includes many nationalities other than Burmese. There is no Buddhist law for all Buddhists, although the Vinaya7 has remained largely the same throughout Buddhist countries. Although this is largely concerned with the life of Buddhist monks and nuns who in prac- tice keep aloof from worldly affairs, it would be a mistake to think of the Vinaya as nothing more than minutiae about monastic dress and monastic eating times. Samantapasadika (CPD 1.2, 1)8 is the great 5th century commentary on the Vi- naya, allegiance to which practically defines what it means to be a Theravada Buddhist. One third of it is devoted to the discussion of just three of the 227 rules of the Patimokkha9, those concerning theft, murder and unlawful sex. As long as Southeast Asian authors of law texts have been interested in regulating these three activities, they have borrowed from the Vinaya.
If the Buddhist Law for those living outside the monasteries, as accepted by the Courts of Burma, was Burmese Buddhist Law10, there is the legal question as to whether it would be obligatory on the part of the courts in Burma to apply it to Buddhists from other countries.11 And then there is another legal question, con- cerning the difference between the terms Burman and Burmese. “These two Eng- lish terms were used interchangeably in colonial times. It was only in 1935 when a distinction arose. ‘Burman’ came to be the designation of the ethnic majority and ‘Burmese’ that of inhabitants of the country as a whole”.12
Although Burmese Buddhist Law has undergone changes, the original content remained basically the same. Under British colonial rule it did not extend be- yond the Buddhist people to whom it applied. Most ethnic minorities in Burma were under a separate judicial and administrative system; they had their own substantive and procedural laws in contradiction to the laws that applied else- where in Burma. According to the Burma Laws Act of 1898, for example, the civil, criminal and revenue administration of each of the Shan States was vested in the respective Chief of the State.13 British judges responsible for the administration of civil justice in Burma did not always fully understand Buddhist Law. Therefore they often used a two-volume reference work of Burmese legal treatises called “The 36 Dhammathats”.14 Sir John Jardine, the Judicial Commissioner of British Burma, researched the area of Buddhist Law even further.15 Eventually his work proved invaluable to Brit- ish judges in Burma. In his law research he found that the Buddhist law called Manugye was most complete. It was written in Burmese prose and was translated by the Principal Assistant to the Commissioner of Tenasserim, Richardson. It was published in 1847 in both English and Burmese versions. It was thus the first translation in English and one of the fullest compilations of Burmese Bud- dhist Law, existing even before the occupation of Lower Burma. In 1951, dur- ing a case before the Supreme Court, the reliability and viability of the Manugye were finally challenged. Due to errors in the translations of the Manugye, the Court had great difficulty to appraise the authority of Buddhist Law.16