Although rarely acknowledged, Buddhist monastics are among the most active lawmakers and jurists in Asia, operating sophisticated networks of courts and constitutions while also navigating – and shaping – secular legal systems. This chapter surveys the entanglements of Buddhist monastic law and state law in Sri Lanka while also providing a general overview of Sri Lanka as a multi-religious, multi-legal site. It introduces readers to the key methods and arguments advanced in this book, including arguments about how and why one should analyse legal pluralism ‘as a practice.’

How is monastic law practised in modern-day Sri Lanka? How do contemporary monastic jurists reckon with multi-legality? This chapter draws on archival and ethnographic research with Sri Lanka’s third-largest monastic community, the Rāmañña Nikāya, to answer these questions and explore the operation of monastic law today. It introduces readers to the Rāmañña constitution, court system, judicial training materials, jurisprudential texts and other features of monastic legal practice. It argues that monastic judges practise legal pluralism in ways that both resist and embrace the parallels between monastic and state law, engaging in a form of ‘double speak’ that, on the one hand, places monastic law ‘on the scale’ of Sri Lankan law while, at the same time, highlighting its superior, more-than-human status.

Sri Lanka is the only Buddhist-majority country in the world without an official state-recognised monastic legal system. This is in spite of the fact that an entire section of the county’s constitution is dedicated to such a venture. How can one explain this? And why does Sri Lanka remain in this impasse? This chapter answers these questions by tracking a significant (and ongoing) series of attempts made by Sri Lanka’s leading intellectuals, educators, politicians, monks and legislators to ‘legalise’ monastic law (S: nītīgata kirīma) by creating some form of statute, tribunal or legal body that could blend monastic and state legal authority. Drawing on an un- and under-studied body of political and legal documents, it explains how a particular approach to legal pluralism – one motivated by a ‘purist’ approach to law – both motivated and sabotaged successive efforts to formally recognise monastic courts and constitutions in state law.

What is monastic law for? This chapter explores the goals of monastic law, beyond its concerns with regulation and governance. Drawing on ethnographic, archival and survey research, it examines the various ‘nonpositivist’ aims pursued by monastic jurists: preserving unity and unanimity (sāmaggi) among monks; maintaining discretion and protecting reputations; avoiding (further) conflict and identifying the root causes of strife; minimising judicial prejudice by eliminating the mental defilements (kilesa) that give rise to them; restoring offenders to the community by applying therapeutic sanctions; aligning the conduct of monks with the concerns of local laity and temple donors; and, most importantly, shortening saṃsāra and hastening nirvana. This chapter highlights the intertwining of positivist and nonpositivist elements in monastic law, shining light on a legal order that not only enforces standards of conduct but also impacts karma, saṃsāra and the path to nirvana.

What is Buddhist monastic law? How should one think about its key texts, institutions and principles? This chapter answers these questions in the context of Sri Lanka and other parts of South and Southeast Asia, focusing especially on ideas of unity and diversity in law. The first part of this chapter summarises key ideas and principles found in the ancient code of monastic law, the Vinaya Piṭaka, which is thought to be the cornerstone of monastic legal texts and practices. The second (longer) part of this chapter introduces readers to a range of monastic legal sources outside the Vinaya Piṭaka, which also play key roles in the practice of monastic law in contemporary Sri Lanka. These sources include commentaries, constitutions, handbooks, judicial manuals, statutes, case law, social expectations and other normative sources produced by monks, state officials and Buddhist laypersons.

Why do similar conditions of legal pluralism lead to conflict in one setting and compromise in another? This chapter addresses this question by approaching legal pluralism not as an empirical condition – a multiplicity of legal orders that individuals navigate – but as a set of practices that bring order, structure and meaning to the obligations, codes and norms that one confronts. Drawing on three relatively recent case studies, this chapter demonstrates how the same set of normative artefacts – the same texts, norms, institutions, and authorities – can be assembled, interpreted, and mobilised in profoundly divergent and even agonistic ways. The first case study involves a monk’s attempt to gain a driving license. The second involves the issuing of identity cards for Buddhist nuns (bhikkhunīs). The third relates to a parliamentary bill designed to recognise monastic constitutions (katikāvatas) in law.

How does the encounter between monastic law and colonial law look from the perspective of Buddhist monastics? The chapter offers an alternative legal history of the nineteenth century, drawing on a largely unstudied archive of Sinhala- and Pali-language legal sources written by Buddhist monks. Using these sources, I highlight the creativity and productivity of Buddhist monastic lawmaking during the nineteenth century. A close analysis of monastic legal texts from this period also reveals key differences in the ways that monastic jurists understood and enacted legal pluralism when compared with colonial officials. Rather than treating the laws of the Buddha and the laws of the Crown as conflicting, as the British tended to do, monastic jurists purposefully aligned them. Rather than hardening legal boundaries between monastic and colonial regulation, monastic jurists pushed in the direction of integration, borrowing and exchange between local and imported laws.

Shortly after the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953, the Buddhist monastic community in South Korea was beset by an internal schism concerning celibacy that turned into a power struggle for control of the Korean sangha. Aside from the temples themselves, the secular courts were the primary battleground in this dispute over monastic marriages and celibacy. The legal case at the heart of the “purification movement” (chŏnghwa undong) offers insight into the monastic community’s attempts to navigate the legal landscape of post-war South Korea. The secular courts had no legal basis under the post-1948 Constitution for deciding whether celibacy was required in order to maintain one’s status as a Buddhist monk. The cases focussed instead on the legality of revising the Chogye Order’s own Constitution (chonghŏn), or more specifically the meeting or gathering in which these changes were authorized. This chapter looks at the intersection of Buddhism and constitutional law in Korea as revealed in these historical events.

This chapter discusses the Cambodian Constitution’s recognition of both Mahanikay and Thommayuth sects, arguing that the reseparation of the sangha was the outcome of a political compromise made in the country’s peace-building process, which has since been overtaken in secular politics. Cambodia’s 1993 Constitution not only symbolized the purported transition to democracy but also the return of Buddhism to the status of state religion. The traditional separation between Mahanikay and Thommayuth sects replaced the unified sangha structure in place since the end of the Khmer Rouge. This new status quo maintains constitutional recognition through the inclusion of the Supreme Patriarch of each sect as members of the Throne Council. However, the novel position of Great Supreme Patriarch brought into question this division. This chapter will suggest that the division should be understood as a political compromise made by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party to the cosignatories of the Paris Peace Accords, and that it leaves an ambiguous new de facto situation within the Buddhist hierarchy. The chapter highlights how the constitutional recognition of Buddhist authority in contemporary Cambodia has been structured by a confluence of party-political and peace-making considerations.

This chapter explores the Vietnamese state’s constitutional framework for governing Buddhism. The framework includes: (1) principles in the big-C Constitution (the formal, written Constitution of 2013); (2) small-c constitutional rules, including broader legislation enacted to implement the formal Constitution, particularly the 2016 Law on Religions and Belief; and (3) the Buddhist constitution, a body of governing law of the Buddhist community, particularly the Charter of the Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam. To some extent, the Vietnamese case illustrates unique features compared to other Buddhist contexts, mainly due to Vietnamese socialism. However, the Vietnamese case also reveals commonalities with the other cases analyzed in this volume.