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Viewing articles tagged 'customary law'
Viewing articles tagged 'customary law'
3 articles
Sabatier, the oath of 1926 and the Rhade law code
For thirteen years a French administrator named Léopold Sabatier governed Darlac on the principle that the land belonged to the Rhade and that outsiders should be kept off it. He set up a court that judged by Rhade law, a school that taught in Rhade, and on January 1, 1926, an oath-taking assembly of the chiefs. The same year he was removed, and...
Jars, rice wine and the buffalo feast
In the old highland villages wealth was counted in buffaloes, gongs and jars — among the Bahnar, a 1966 handbook says, it was “usually measured” in exactly those three. The jars held the rice wine that every rite was drunk from, through long bamboo straws; the buffaloes were given to the spirits at the great feasts. Both were money, law and reli...
Customary law and the village court
Before any state reached the highlands, our villages had law: rules on land, marriage, debt and injury, judged by the headman and elders and enforced by fines paid in buffaloes, jars and gongs. The French wrote some of it down and built courts on it; the Saigon government set out to replace it and then, after the 1964 revolt and the highland lea...
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