[1] Tibetan legal literature has been one of the least known areas of Tibetan literature due to the dearth of research and the general obscurity of Tibetan bureaucratic and legal vocabulary.[page 453]

[2] Other compounds are: yul khrims (local law); chos khrims (religious law); tshul khrims (moral law and monastic rules); rang khrims (self-law or regulation). Exceptions to this general rule include words like bka' khrims (commandments, commandments of law). Within this group, the strongest contrast for Tibetans is between chos khrims and rgyal khrims, the former representing the word of the Buddha in its purest form, including the rules of the monastic community; the latter the rules of the historic kings based on the foundation of the teachings of the Buddha. Although Tibetans depict the political, religious, administrative and legal functions of their former society as an interconnected and interpenetrable whole, this dichotomy between religious and king law remains at the foundation of their structure of government and constitutes the demarcation of their legal system.

[3] An excellent example here is the beginning of the rnam thar of Mi la ras pa, which concerns his familial struggles over an oral will by his father.

[4] Several of these edicts are available; for example, see "The Edict of the C'os rGyal of Gyantse" in Tucci: 714.

[5] For example, many supplements were available in the Yuan period (1271-1368) in China. See Ch'en: 90.

[6] Some Tibetans interviewed even reported codes from multiple nationalities. In the northeast of the plateau, the tenthold of one nomadic leader had two Tibetan law codes that were consulted and viewed as authoritative, in addition to copies of both Chinese and Mongolian law codes.

[7] See extensive case citation in French. Note that it is also likely that the law codes merely reproduced what was already customary and acceptable among the population.

[8] His two primary sources here are the Royal Annals and the mKhas pa'i dga' ston.

[9] Private communications, Tsewang Tamdin, Dharamsala, India, 1986-87.

[10] The Tibetan for this in the law code is che thabs mtho gyal gyi gshags la.

[11] Or perhaps, though less likely, it points to borrowing from other cultures.

[12] It gives a history of the law of murder, the social classes that distinguish the victim, compensation payments (these categories were already present in the empire period), exceptions in the case of killing a woman or killing by a child, murder during a theft, murder by mob or multiple persons, attempted murder, payments in land instead of money or goods, mitigation in payments, merit payments for the purification of the dead body, payments in the case of cremation and for religious ceremonies, numerous allowances to be paid to all the relatives, reductions due to early payment and then a very long passage on the form that the payments can take.

[13] For a discussion of this aspect of the law codes (with charts), see Meisezahl.

[14] Other codes, particularly the sNe'u gdong law code, have a further variant section entitled "Behind the Pass," which is a type of hot-pursuit law.

[15] Also, the number sixteen was chosen to correspond with the original Sixteen[page 454] Pure Human Moral Rules cited by Uray. For another version of a gTsang code, see gTshang pa rgyal po'i khrims yig zhal lce bcu gsum pa, The Code of Thirteen Sections of the Tsang Kings, LTWA Ta.5 13546.

[16] This date is from Kungo Thubten Sangye's research into this code. Concerning what is presented as a Dalai Lama code, R.O. Meisenzahl states the following, citing Yamaguchi (nos. 443-444): "In Yamaguchi's opinion this text was written during the term of the regent Sonam Choephel of Tibet (1595-1658). In the colophon, Folio 52b, however, the date 1631 is documented, which date is before the above regency" (my translation from the German). See Meisezahl: 222. This could be a gTsang law code if the above date of 1631 is correct.

[17] This law code has no official name in Tibetan and is found in several versions. The one particularly cited here is in Tibetan Legal Materials, LTWA Ta.5 13550, pages 35-95 (Delhi: Dorjee Tsering at M. M. Offset Press). The numbers cited in the text from this work correspond to the line numbers of the interlinear translation of this text done in 1985-1987 with Kungo Thubten Sangye.

[18] This work comes in a sixteen-section version as well. The fifth regent is also credited with authorship of a text entitled "Twenty-one Rules for the Government Officer," an unpublished manuscript I was given in Tibet.

[19] There may also be other decades that will become important law code periods as more documents become available. In the early twentieth century, for example, an Army Code (which I have in my collection) was drafted during the ascendancy of Tsarong.[page 455]