Settlement of Homicide Disputes in Sakya (Tibet)

Abstract

THIS paper will introduce a study,' now in progress, concerned with the settlement of disputes arising out of homicide in Sakya. More general information about Sakya as such may be found elsewhere (Ekvall and Downs 1963; Tucci 1940; Carrassco 1959; Das 1902; Kawaguchi 1909; Desideri 1937), but for now, in order to appreciate the scope of this diminutive jurisdiction, it is sufficient to bear in mind that Sakya, until 1959, was a quasi-independent (Rohn 1963) Tibetan principality about 400 miles west and slightly south of Llasa and just northeast of Mount Everest with about 2100 square miles of territory and about 17,000 people, mostly sedentary farmers, although there were about 10 per cent who were nomads and about 500 buddhist monks included. Thus, Sakya affords an opportunity for a case study of the dispute settlement process in an isolated, relatively unknown, traditionally organized, oriental jurisdiction.2 Significantly, Sakya was literate. It has been said that to ask the lawyer to look beyond his legal technicalities is like expecting the tiger to abolish the jungle. Unhappily this is true in a sense, for surely the legal jungle of our complex industrial society is here to stay, and legal professionalism is surely as sound as the consequent division of labor. Still we all want to see what we can of the whole of sociality, and for such expansive yearnings, small, isolated societies such as Sakya offer more comprehensible models which can be observed in entirety. Modernly, murder and other homicidal offenses are regarded as such horrendous and obvious crimes against the society and the state that it is easy to forget the earlier social and legal questing that went into the building of our social attitudes and legal concepts regarding homicidal crimes. In its raw beginnings, homicide was often the result of a private dispute: someone