transgressing the law karma, theft and its punishment：违反了法律业，盗窃和惩罚精品.pdfVIP

Transgressing the Law: Karma, Theft and Its Punishment Richard W Whitecross1 n March 20th 2004, His Majesty, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck Oformally decreed the abolition of capital punishment (gzhung khrims) in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The rationale for the abolition after a series of major debates in the National Assembly during the 1990s and the early years of this century was that “…the implications of capital punishment, in Bhutanese law, is seen as a contradiction both from a religious and legal perspective… Bhutan being a Buddhist nation, capital punishment is seen as a contradiction to the basic doctrines of Buddhism.”(Kuensel 2004).2 Until March 2004, certain acts of theft were potentially punishable by death. In this paper, I combine an analysis of Bhutanese texts with ethnographic research to examine the relationship between Buddhist doctrines and Bhutanese laws in relation to theft between the seventeenth and twenty first centuries. To do this involves tracing the shift from the theocracy established during the early seventeenth century by the Drukpa Kagyu hierarch, Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal to the monarchy established almost one hundred years ago by Ugyen Wangchuck. As the last remaining, independent Himalayan Buddhist state, Bhutan has consciously sought since the mid 1980s to protect its cultural heritage through various official policies which have sought to “balance tradition with change.” Bhutan’s vibrant, if arguably eq