This book originated in a series of workshops and conferences that began in 2004, held at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at Buffalo Law School, State University of New York, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Lake Como, Italy. These events brought together leading scholars – of Buddhism, Asian studies and other fields – from across the world. One such event included a conversation with the fourteenth Dalai Lama. The book is an integral part of an ambitious project at Cambridge University Press to foster understanding of religious laws: it stands alongside other recent publications on, for example, Hindu Law and Islamic Law, and, notably, those in the new series ‘Christianity and the Law’, under the general editorship of John Witte at Emory University at Atlanta.

The book was inspired by and is dedicated to Frank E Reynolds ‘for his lifelong work in the field and his steadfast commitment to establishing Buddhism and Law as an accepted pursuit’ (p iv). In exploring the relationship between Buddhism and law in Asia, it seeks to question the common understanding that Buddhism is apolitical, without implications for law; to uncover the juridical aspects of the religion from the time of the Buddha to the present and the role of Buddhism in supplying basic structures for both legal ideologies and secular substantive laws; and to address how Buddhism deals with the interface between its own religious impulses and secular government. The collection is interdisciplinary in terms of method, and its distinguished panel of authors contribute expertise in a wide variety of academic subjects that include Asian and Chinese history, religion and comparative religion, law and legal theory, law and religion, anthropology, and Indian, Japanese and Korean life and culture, and, needless to say, Buddhist studies. The book may therefore be located within the canon currently developing in law and religion as the interface between law, religion and society.

The collection has twenty chapters arranged in four parts, dealing with Buddhism and law in, respectively, India, South and South-East Asia, East Asia, and North Asia and the Himalayan region. Part I is preceded by an excellent and substantial introduction written by the editors, who guide the reader in ways to think about Buddhism and law. It introduces the life of Buddha, the study of dharma (a fundamental term in Buddhism, long translated as law), Buddhist monasticism and the Vinaya, or law codes regulating the religious life of Buddhist monasteries, as well as other Buddhist legal texts. The introduction explains how Buddhism and law fit into the world of legal scholarship: it defines law from a Buddhist perspective (to include not only enforceable rules but also social manners, customary practices and etiquette), challenges the view that Buddhism does not have a juridical dimension, explores the concept of legal orientalism and examines how the new discipline of Buddhism and law may be integrated within the existing fields of law and religion, law and society, comparative law and legal history. The introduction also offers possible ways of thinking about the scope, distinctiveness and future directions for the study of Buddhism and law.

The chapters in Part I deal with the Buddhist texts, foundational concepts and social environments which relate to the origin and development of Buddhism in India. The authors examine a wide range of materials and subjects: Indian society around the time of Buddha and the emergence of state-like entities – the mahājanapada – with their own legal cultures; the composition and content of the Vinaya and what they tell us about Buddhist concepts of law and how these monastic laws relate to secular law; the enforcement of Buddha's rules, and associated concepts of authority, obedience and kingship; Buddhist norms on property (and monks as lawyers); and the activities of Buddhist nuns, with their distinctive legal status as independent economic agents.

Part II, on South and South-East Asia, deals with Buddhism and law in Sri Lanka; how the Vinaya applied directly to monastics (pavidi) and indirectly to lay people (gihi) in setting informal customs for proper social conduct; and the interaction between the Buddhist legal culture in pre- and post-colonial Sri Lanka. Next come Buddhist images of community, law and religion in a postmodern context – particularly the relationship between the religious community (sangha) and wider society and government. The following chapter treats the regulation of Buddhism in modern Sri Lanka (which has, for example, a Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance on temple trusteeship) and how the Sri Lankan constitution provides that the Republic ‘shall give to Buddhism the foremost place’ and for the ‘duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, while assuring to all religions the rights [constitutionally] granted’ (Article 9). This is compared with the provisions of the Cambodian and Thai constitutions, for example, which respectively make Buddhism the state religion and an object of special protection. The remaining chapters in this part focus on Buddhist law in South-East Asia (including legal reasoning, such as the use of maxims) and on laws on monastic inheritance in seventeenth-century Burma.

Part III explores East Asia. There are three chapters on Buddhism and law in China, dealing with: the emergence of distinctive patterns of law in Chinese history; ownership and theft of monastic land in Ming China; and the Qing Dynasty to the present day, which includes discussion of the Ordinance on Religious Affairs 2004 with its norms on, for example, the Chinese Buddhist Association. Then follows a chapter on Korea, where the Vinaya has operated as a source for secular laws, and two chapters on Japan. Part IV has chapters on Tibet, Mongolia, Karma, monastic law and gender justice, and Buddhism and the constitution in Bhutan, where the constitution of 2008 provides that the monarch is the embodiment of Buddhism (Article 2), that Buddhism is the ‘spiritual heritage of Bhutan’ (Article 3), that the monarch must protect all faiths and their right to freedom of belief (Article 7) and that ‘the State shall strive to promote those conditions that will enable the successful pursuit of Gross National Happiness’ (Article 9). Each chapter in the book is footnoted and there are also helpful maps, illustrations, abbreviations, a selection of (further) reading and an invaluable index.

Three minor criticisms may be made. First, it would have been good to see a concluding chapter to sum up the themes explored in individual chapters – above all, to show how, unequivocally, Buddhism possesses a system of religious law and what its fundamental principles are. Second, a glossary of the technical Buddhist vocabulary might have been useful. Third, it would have been good to see more discussion of the means by which communities of Buddhists in the countries studied regulate themselves today – how the classical sources of Buddhist law are deployed in the administration of temples and other bodies of the Buddhist faithful, in their constitutions and in similar regulatory instruments. In this regard, it is worth nothing that, while the 20 contributors are distinguished scholars in their fields, only one works in the regions studied (India) and, from the short biographical details set out in the book, only one was ordained in Buddhism; with the exception of a contributor from Germany, and another from New Zealand, the remainder are professors or lecturers at universities and colleges in America (12) and the UK (5). The involvement of practitioners of Buddhist law might have contributed much to our understanding of the practice of this species of religious law and how its classical elements relate to modern regulatory instruments of Buddhist communities.

In any event, this book is a profoundly valuable contribution to our understanding of Buddhism, its rich and complex traditions of religious law and its relationship with the secular laws of Asian countries. Its interdisciplinary approach is a clear blueprint for studies in religious law generally. The book is also particularly valuable for the inter-faith study of comparative religious laws, containing much material which resonates in aspects of, for example, Christian, Jewish and Islamic laws. Above all, through its focus on concrete textual legal data in their social, historical and political contexts, it offers a practical understanding of Buddhism, clarifies the juridical dimension of the religion and provides a clear agenda for further research. French, Nathan and their colleagues have done a great service to the field of law and religion in general, and to the study of religious law in particular. It is hoped that the academic agenda which they set in this important volume will be taken up enthusiastically by scholars. The book is to be thoroughly recommended as an example of the fruits of cross-disciplinary studies in the field of religious law as experienced in Buddhism.