Dr. Fernanda Pirie receives AHRC Leadership Fellows award

From a manuscript on Tibetan law,
Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, Dharamsala

Dr Fernanda Pirie,

Associate Professor in Socio-Legal Studies,

will be working on this project Oct 2015 - Mar 2017:

Legal Ideology in Tibet:
Politics, Practice, and Religion

The relationship between law and religion is one of the great

themes of historical legal scholarship, yet the legal realm of Tibet’s

theocracy has barely been considered from a socio-historic

perspective. This project is tracing the different strands that

emerged in Tibetan legal thought during one of its formative

periods, the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, which

culminated in the rise of the Dalai Lamas’ Ganden Podrang

government.

The members of the project are examining texts, ideas, and

ideologies considered in their social contexts. They are tracing the

different sources and strands of legal thought, exploring tensions

between them and attempts by Tibetan writers, many of whom

were religious scholars, to reconcile religious, ethical, and

jurisprudential ideals. The approach is socio-historical, involving

close examination of textual sources, but considering legal,

ethical, and religious ideas in their social and political contexts

and bringing them into comparison with scholarship on Islamic,

Indic, Christian, and Chinese legal traditions. Socio-historical and

anthropological insights are thus being brought to bear on a field

dominated by textual scholarship, with the goal of developing new

perspectives on Tibetan legal thought.

As well as publications on Tibet’s legal tradition, this project will

culminate in the establishment of a web-based resource, which

will incorporate copies, summaries, translations, and indexes of

the relevant documents, currently scattered throughout different

archives and collections.

Dr Pirie web page link