New from Harvard University Press:
Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Cases from the Yuan dianzhang, by
Bettine Birge (University of Southern California). A description from the Press:
The Mongol conquest of China in the
thirteenth century and Khubilai Khan’s founding of the Yuan dynasty
brought together under one government people of different languages,
religions, and social customs. Chinese law evolved rapidly to
accommodate these changes, as reflected in the great compendium Yuan dianzhang (Statutes and Precedents of the Yuan Dynasty). The records of legal cases contained in this seminal text, Bettine Birge
shows, paint a portrait of medieval Chinese family life—and the
conflicts that arose from it—that is unmatched by any other historical
source.
Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan reveals the
complex, sometimes contradictory inner workings of the Mongol-Yuan legal
system, seen through the prism of marriage disputes in chapter eighteen
of the Yuan dianzhang, which has never before been translated
into another language. Birge’s meticulously annotated translation
clarifies the meaning of terms and passages, some in a hybrid
Sino-Mongolian language, for specialists and general readers alike. The
text includes court testimony—recorded in the vivid vernacular of people
from all social classes—in lawsuits over adultery, divorce, rape,
wife-selling, marriages of runaway slaves, and other conflicts. It
brings us closer than any other source to the actual Mongolian speech of
Khubilai and the great khans who succeeded him as they struggled to
reconcile very different Mongol, Muslim, and Chinese legal traditions
and confront the challenges of ruling a diverse polyethnic empire.
A few blurbs:
“Birge has been working on Song and Yuan
marriage law for more than two decades and is better qualified than
anyone else to do the translation. This is a pleasure to read; she
writes lucidly and gracefully. The subjects—law in China, marriage law,
the Yuan period—are all ones that will draw readers to the work. Birge’s
translation will be used not only by historians of China, but also by
scholars and students interested in comparative law, social life and
marriage, plus the Yuan dynasty and the Mongols more generally.”—Patricia Buckley Ebrey
“Based on painstaking research on legal
decisions concerning marriage during the Yuan dynasty, this work
illuminates the contradictions and difficulties the Mongols faced in
attempting to develop a consistent approach to marital law. Birge’s
descriptions of the Mongol government and the lawmaking process are
informative, and her translations accurate and readable. The book offers
many revealing insights, including that women instituted many of the
legal cases, an indication that they were not as secluded or powerless
as commonly thought.”—Morris Rossabi
More information is available here
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975514.
