Buddhist Law under Colonialism, with Benjamin Schonthal (Weds. March 10, 2021)

The Boston University Center for the Study of Asia is pleased to present

Buddhist Law under Colonialism

Prof. Benjamin Schonthal (University of Otago)

Wednesday, March 10, 2021 from 4:30 pm-5:45 pm ET

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Abstract: Scholarship on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Asia frequently stresses the defining importance of colonialism on the practice and conception of religious law. Colonial legal ideas and agents, the argument goes, tended to transform the normative systems of colonised peoples from fluid and pluralistic sets of practices to codified, stabilised, rationalised systems, which Europeans could easily identify as “law.”  In this short talk, I want to question this scholarly narrative as it relates to one form of religious law that has been largely overlooked by scholars to date: Buddhist law in Sri Lanka/Ceylon. Drawing on a collection of neglected monastic legal manuscripts and pamphlets in Sinhala and Pāli as well as colonial legal archives, I hope to tell another story about the changes and developments in Buddhist legal practice during the nineteenth century, one framed by dynamics of what I call inter-legal mimesis. The talk will be informal and will present new research that I’m currently working through, with the hope of encouraging discussion and soliciting your feedback. I also hope to give a brief overview of the book project as a whole.

Bio: Benjamin Schonthal is Professor of Buddhism and Asian Religions and co-Director of the Otago Centre for Law and Society at the University of Otago, in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Ben received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has held visiting positions at Northwestern University, the Institute for Advanced Studies (Bielefeld) and the Law School at the University of Chicago. Ben’s research examines the intersections of religion, law and politics in South and Southeast Asia. He is the author of Buddhism, Politics and the Limits of Law (Cambridge University Press 2016) and a variety of scholarly articles. He has received University awards for both Distinction in Research and  Excellence in Teaching. His current research project, Law’s Karma, supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand, examines the politics and practice of Buddhist law in Southern Asia. With Tom Ginsburg, he is also working on a project on Buddhism and Constitutional Law, with support from the National Science Foundation.

Moderator: Jeremy Menchik, Associate Professor, Pardee School of Global Studies

Discussant: Thomas Borchert is Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont. He received his PhD in History of Religions at the University of Chicago in 2006, and is the author of Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s Southwest Border (Hawai’i, 2017) and the editor of Theravada Buddhism in Colonial Contexts (Routledge, 2018). His current research is focused on monasticism, governance and citizenship within Thai monastic communities.