The cunning of legal pluralism: negotiating monism and pluralism in Buddhist law

Abstract

Arguments about normative unity and multiplicity dominate a great deal of scholarship on legal pluralism. Yet such arguments are not only advanced by academics, nor are they value-free descriptions of law. Notions of legal unity and multiplicity may also be deployed strategically by the legal actors that scholars study in order to advance their own interests, or criticize others. This article considers this fact, along with its methodological consequences, by highlighting conceits of unity and multiplicity as they operate within Buddhist monastic law in Sri Lanka. Drawing on Buddhist legal texts in Sri Lanka’s main vernacular language of Sinhala as well as the Theravāda Buddhist liturgical language of Pāli, this article illuminates competing theories of legal monism and pluralism operating within traditions of Theravāda Buddhist monastic law. In so doing, it explores the complex politics—of averring or critiquing the self-presentation of legal authorities—that necessarily accompanies the study of religious law and other forms of non-state law.