The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet

·期刊原文
The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet
Reviewed by Yelle, Robert A.
The Journal of Religion
Vol.77 No.2 (April 1997)
pp.343-344
COPYRIGHT 1997 University of Chicago

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This book addresses a profound gap in our knowledge of Tibetan
culture prior to the complete takeover by the Chinese in 1959: the
structure and operation of the secular legal system. Rebecca Redwood
French traces the existence of this gap to the Western view of Tibet
as "overwhelmingly exotic, oriental and therefore consumingly
'Other'" (p. 12), assumed to be subject to the despotic control of
the Buddhist theocracy. Such an assumption had validated the neglect
of the legal sphere of the Tibetan laity by rendering it flat and,
consequently, invisible. French defines her project as a recovery of
the thickness and three-dimensional reality of Tibetan secular law:
"One of the basic tasks of a study of legal cosmology is to collect
and present material from as many angles and in as many different
forms and voices as possible. Multiple refractions from multiple
vantage points, each added to the next, begin to create an awareness
of the space that law occupies in another society" (p. 313). In
these terms, she succeeds admirably. The result of her efforts is a
richly compelling account of the Tibetan legal cosmology, an account
as important for calling into question a number of our basic
assumptions about what constitutes "law" or a "legal system" as it
is for presenting one significant aspect of a unique and threatened
culture.
French reconstructs the secular legal system in large part through a
series of intensely interesting and detailed narratives of Tibetans
in exile, the "many different voices" referred to above. While such
a method might seem inappropriate for the presentation of a legal
"system," it is perfectly suited to what French calls the Tibetan
"legal cosmology": "Tibetans understand law, much as they understand
the universe, as a kaleidoscopic cosmology: that is, as realigning
sets of patterns and actions that are both constant and ever
changing, integrating and disintegrating, coherent and incoherent"
(p. 16). The Tibetan concept of the radical particularity of
experience supports a focus on the unique elements of each legal
case and a corresponding lack of attention to precedent or the
development of a complete system of legal rules. As French reveals,
while there were various secular legal codes in Tibet from as early
as the Empire period (620-866 C.E.), these codes were less rigid,
less fully prescriptive, in short, less systematic than legal codes
in the modern West. According to French, the real basis of the
Tibetan legal cosmology is found not in a system of rules but in
those "cosmological categories" that are the "conceptual and
practical building blocks that structure legal reasoning and action"
(p. 59).
Following the brief but excellent introduction in part 1 to the
culture, history, and legal codes of Tibet prior to 1959, part 2
addresses these cosmological categories, including notions of karma,
time, myth, and language, in relation to the law. The overarching
category, representative of the entire legal cosmology, is the
integrating symbol of the mandala, which French argues was effective
in the Tibetans self-understanding of their legal system (pp.
175-91). Nearly every chapter in parts 3 and 4 is centered on the
narrative of a particular case, with French's exegesis and relevant
background information. Part 5 consists of two chapters, the first
on crime and punishment and the second a brief biography of Kungola
Thubten Sangye, the Tibetan official who was French's mentor and
collaborator in the reconstruction of the Tibetan secular legal
system. Throughout the book, and despite her eschewal of the Western
focus on law as a system of rules, French nevertheless provides
detailed information on a wide range of issues of procedural and
substantive law, information that will be of great interest to
comparative legal scholars. The entire book reflects French's
interpretation of the Tibetan legal cosmology as a mandala: the
various chapters, radically particular in their focus on specific
concepts or cases, finally cohere to present an integrated and
incredibly vivid image of Tibetan law.
Both the structure and the details of French's account challenge
modern Western ideas of "law" and "legal system." Indeed, it is her
explicit intention to problematize such notions as the American
separation of myth and law, a separation that coexists with a mythic
understanding of "law as a form of rational science, a neutral
procedural system independent of religion and the supernatural' (p.
84). French contrasts the Tibetan understanding of law as
represented by the integrating "All-One" symbol of the mandala with
such Western dualistic categories of thought (pp. 176-77) and
questions the appropriateness of analyzing the Tibetan legal
cosmology in terms of these categories and their hierarchizing
tendencies (p. 343). While French's rather simple classification of
Tibet and the "West" according to these different modes of thought
may itself be questionable, her book demonstrates the success of the
model of the mandala as a more appropriate "symbolic metaphor" or
"descriptive device" (p. 180) for Tibetan legal cosmology than
Western categories. Much more could be done with French's critique
of positive law, which remains largely implicit in this book.
Readers of The Golden Yoke may hope that its author develops this
critique in the future; or else, emboldened and enriched in
perspective by her marvelous work, they may do so themselves.
ROBERT A. YELLE, Chicago, Illinois.