¹ Hickey, Gerald C., Village in Vietnam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

² Yu, Insun, Law and Family in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Vietnam (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1978)Google Scholar.

³ Young, Stephen B., “The Law of Property and Elite Prerogatives During Vietnam's Lê Dynasty: 1428-1788”, Journal of Asian History 10 (1976): 1–48Google Scholar.

⁴ Whitmore, Mohn K., “Supernaturalism and Power in Southeast Asia: Administrative Control of the Spirits” (Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁵ Tai, Ta Van, “The Status of Women in Traditional Vietnam: A Comparison of the Code of the Lê Dynasty (1428-1788) with the Chinese Codes”, Journal of Asian History 15 (1981): 97–145Google Scholar.

⁶ Deloustal, Raymond, “La Justice dans l'ancien Annam”, Bulletin de l'École Francaise d'Extrême Orient 8-13, 19, and 22 (1908–1922). The Deloustal translation does not include Article 219 of the Code. Thus, for any article over 219, 1 must be subtracted to give the proper reference in the Deloustal translation (e.g., Article 410 is Deloustal's Article 409)Google Scholar.

⁷ Than, Luong, Can Nai Quang, and Nguyen Si Giac, Quô Triêu Hinh Luât [Hinh Luât Trêu Lê] (Saigon: Truong Luat-Khoa Dai-Hoc, 1956)Google Scholar.

⁸ This dating of the final promulgation of the Lê Code follows Gaspardone. Deloustal himself believed the code was promulgated a full decade later. See Huy, Nguyen Ngoc, “Le Code des Le: ‘Quoc Trieu Hinh Luat’ ou ‘Lois Penales de la Dynastie Nationale1’”, Bulletin de I'École Française d'Extrême Orient 67 (1980): 190–91Google Scholar.

⁹ Huy, Nguyen Ngoc, “Le Code des Le”, pp. 190–211Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The central issue is not so much what a particular version of the Lê Code specified, but rather that there were distinct changes during the Lê Dynasty regarding the roles of the village chief and the mechanism by which he came to office. Yu describes these, and emphasizes the changes beginning in the mid seventeenth century through which the village chief was directly selected and nominated by the district magistrate. He explains the changes in terms of the need by the state for greater internal control. The state, in the “effort to spread its ideas, … first found it necessary to appoint village chiefs who were fully integrated into the ruling ideology and committed to emphasize that ideology to the people” (, Yu, Law and Family, p. 216)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Whitmore, “Supernaturalism and Power”.

¹² Cf. , Deloustal, “La Justice”, 10: 461 et. seqGoogle Scholar.

¹³ As Ebihara suggests for Cambodia in this volume, the more important issue may be not whether the society is characterized by either horizontal or vertical divisions, but that it is characterized by both.

¹⁴ Hickey, Village in Vietnam; Spencer, Robert, “The Annamese Kinship System”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology I (1945): 284–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benedict, Paul, “An Analysis of Annamese Kinship Terms”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 3 (1947): 371–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooke, Joseph R., Pronominal Reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Haines, David, “The Structure of Kinship in Vietnam: Implications for Refugee Adaptation” (Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Denver, Colorado, 1980)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See , Yu, Law and FamilyGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ The example in the text is very rudimentary. Consider, for example, the case of a man who has two sons. The hLÓg-hóa property goes to the elder son, who passes it to his son. This son has only daughters. However, his cousin (the son of the original man's younger son) does have a male child. The hulóng-hóa property subsequently goes to this child in order to provide the most appropriate veneration of the ancestors (Article 398).

¹⁷ Ta Van Tai, “Status of Women”.

¹⁸ For example, an accusation of the husband by the wife was not only one of the Ten Abominations (Article 2) but sufficient to justify exile if correct (Article 504) or strangulation if the accusation was false (Articles 502-503). A wife's beating of her husband was punishable by exile (Article 481), but husbands apparently were subject to no penalty for beating their wives unless they actually inflicted injury, and even if they did inflict injury, the punishment was significantly lighter (Article 482). Further, husbands had the right to repudiate their wives on a variety of grounds-barrenness, jealousy, disease, disobedience (to the husband's parents), causing disharmony, or stealing (Article 310).

¹⁹ , Yu, Law and FamilyGoogle Scholar; Tai, Ta Van, “Status of Women.”Google Scholar

²⁰ Not only was filial impiety-quite widely defined-one of the ten abominations (Article 2), but it was severely punished under the Lê Code. Disobedience or failure to support parents was punishable by penal servitude (Article 506). Children who actually beat their parents were punished by exile (to a remote province) or strangulation if any injury to the parent resulted (Article 475). Parents, on the other hand, who beat their children were subject to no penalty unless the beating resulted in death, and then the penalty was military servitude (Article 475).

²¹ The clearest documentation for this in the Lê Code is Article 388 which stipulates that, in the case of two parents who both die without leaving a will, one twentieth of their property shall be placed under the administration of the eldest son for huong hoa and the rest is divided among the sons and daughters. That women maintained this property after marriage is fully established by Articles 374 and 375, which address the situation in which one spouse dies before the other.

²² Tai, Ta Van, “Status of Women”, p. 131Google Scholar.

²³ Article 380, for example, specifies a one-half share for the adopted child as compared to the natural child. Tai, Ta Van (“Status of Women”, pp. 133–35) suggests, on the basis of largely indirect evidence, thatGoogle Scholar secondary wives did have distinct rights to inherit property. The point is that a wide set of people had not necessarily equal rights to inherit particular property, but independent and legally supported rights to inherit at least some of it. There is an inevitable tension here between the right to inherit on the one hand, and the right to make a will or distribute property before death on the other (see , Yu, Law and Family, pp. 160–65)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Haines, David, Rutherford, Dorothy, and Thomas, Patrick, “Family and Community Among Vietnamese Refugees”, International Migration Review 15 (1981): 310–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ , Yu, Law and Family, p. 144Google Scholar; Tai, Ta Van, “Status of Women”, pp. 109–10Google Scholar.