This contribution seeks to provoke scholars of Buddhism and law to consider epigraphy, especially lithic inscriptions from Southeast Asia, as a bountiful, though hitherto underserved, archive for writing Buddhist legal histories. Moreover, it aims to challenge epigraphists to address the nature of their inscriptions as legal documents, and to incorporate in their analyses a consideration of their status as such. In attending to the contents and formal ingredients of Old Burmese (12–13th centuries CE) epigraphical testimony, as well as later (17–18th centuries CE) legal treatises that cast light on epigraphy’s rationale, the article proposes not only that the larger proportion of the vast corpus of Burmese lithic inscriptions can, and should, be understood as comprising a collection of juridical texts, but also that the history of endowments to Buddhist institutions such as the monastery can, and should, be interpreted within an environment of law in which epigraphy played a crucial role as a written form of evidence of property ownership and transfer.
目次
Abstract & Keywords 327 1. The Problem with “Legal Inscriptions” 328 2. Nyaungyangyi’s Daughter and Acav Racasū 339 3. Provenance 342 4. Inheritance 345 5. Swearing 350 Bibliography 353
