Narratives of Buddhist legislation: Textual authority and legal heterodoxy in seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burma

In 1681 a monk under the patronage of the royal court at Ava was requested to compile a bibliography of authoritative Buddhist scripture. Uttamasikkha was tasked with cataloguing which texts then circulating in Burma were part of the Pitakat or Buddhist 'canon', most likely in connection with a project to copy a new set of manuscripts for the king's merit. (1) This canon was defined for him as comprising those texts that contained 'the profound and venerable speech (nhup nak tau) of the Lord Buddha, Solitary Buddhas (paccekabuddha), or the Enlightened (arhat)', as opposed to those that were 'the work of deities, sages (rsi), or unenlightened masters learned in the scriptures'. (2) The bibliographical project he faced presupposed an ideal literary hierarchy as well as a practical uncertainty about the relative authority of texts lying in Burmese manuscript libraries. After itemising in detail what he considers to be the legitimate contents of the Pitakat, Uttamasikkha turns his attention to works written by deities and sages. Here he provides a list of several texts and genres--comprising law, astrology and alchemy, Sanskrit grammar, and politics (niti) (3)--and singles out thirteen legal treatises by name. Among these thirteen is included the Gold Line Dhammasat of Manusara, which was compiled less than thirty years prior under the guidance of a celebrated monk, Tipitakalankara Munindaghosa. Uttamasikkha concludes his bibliography by cautioning that these legal and other treatises were written by sages and wise men and that they are excluded from or 'outside' (bahira) the category of canon--they are 'not Buddhist texts (sasana tau kyamh, ma hut) and pose a danger (antaray) to the path and fruition of nibbana'. (4) How is it that a legal text, and one compiled with the help of a famous monk no less, might pose a danger to Buddhist enlightenment? What were the taxonomies of authoritative scripture or countervailing ideologies of law that could enable such a criticism? These questions raised by Uttamasikkha's bibliography are important not only for the history of Burmese law, they relate to fundamental uncertainties in the minds of monastic commentators about the legitimacy of the heterogeneous corpora of Buddhist texts and their associated practices in premodern Burma. Debates about the proper boundaries of Buddhist scripture characterise a significant proportion of seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burmese monastic writings. The prevalence of such debates shows clearly that the scope of the canon was not universally fixed, and that the classification of Buddhist texts as belonging to or excluded from the Pitakat was in the process of ongoing formulation. According to 'Theravada' tradition the contents of the Pali canon or Tipitaka were established by the early fifth century CE when Buddhaghosa, a monk who was an affiliate of the Sinhalese Mahavihara fraternity, explicitly demarcated its limits in certain of his commentaries. (5) Although there is strong evidence that this authoritative Mahaviharin framework of understanding the parameters of scripture was known in Burma from the thirteenth century (for there is evidence that Buddhaghosa's texts were transmitted in Burma then) we can be equally certain on the basis of later evidence that it was not universally accepted, but rather exerted varying degrees of influence on Buddhist culture at different times and places. Thus the presence or absence of notions of textual authority must be approached as the outcome of specific intellectual histories and in relation to local textual and commentarial practices. (6) The principles guiding the inclusion of a text in the category of Pitakat are not fully explicit or standardised across seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burmese literature; however, the majority of authors who discuss the issue follow the Pali commentaries in taking the criterion of sanghayana tan (Pali, sangiti-arulha, 'presented at a recitation')--whether a text was recited during the first three Buddhist Councils or 'Communal Recitations' (sangiti) and thus worthy of the status of the 'word of the Buddha' (Buddhavacana)--as primary. …