Tenets Spoken by Indra: A Translation of the Discourse on Good Judgement from the Three Seals Law
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54157/tls.269220Keywords:
Three Seals Law, Indra, Ayutthaya, Judgement, Four wrong coursesAbstract
The Tenets Spoken by Indra is a discourse on good judgement from the Ayutthaya-era Three Seals Law. It has a lecture on avoiding the four wrong courses (agati), which is conventional for old legal texts in Buddhist societies, but in other ways is rather unusual. It may be unique among such old law texts in giving Indra the leading role. Its instructions to judges on reaching a good judgement employ several unusual figures of speech. It may technically still be in force. We believe this is the first full English translation of the text.
References
Doniger, Wendy, and Brian K. Smith. The Laws of Manu (Penguin Books 1991).
Olivelle, Patrick. Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava-Dharmásāstra (Oxford University Press 2005). https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195171464.001.0001
Lammerts, D. Christian. Buddhist Law in Burma: A History of Dhammasattha Texts and Jurisprudence, 1250–1850 (University of Hawaii Press 2018).
Appleton, Naomi. Shared Characters in Jain, Buddhist and Hindu Narrative: Gods, Kings and Other Heroes (Routledge 2017). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315608860
Reynolds, Frank E., and Mani B. Reynolds (trs and eds). Three Worlds According to King Ruang: A Thai Buddhist Cosmology (University of California Press 1982).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Chris Baker, Pasuk Phongpaichit
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright and publishing rights without restrictions, but grant Thai Legal Studies the right of first publication in English and to distribute the work under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (“CC BY 4.0”). It allows others to freely share the work, including the making of translations. There is no charge or fee for readers to immediately view published articles or content, and users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from Thai Legal Studies or the author(s), the only requirement being that an acknowledgement is given of the work’s authorship and its initial publication in English by Thai Legal Studies.
