[Review] Ludo Rocher, Studies in Hindu Law and Dharmaśāstra, edited by Donald R. Davis, Jr. (original) (raw)
2014, Religions of South Asia 8.2 (2014): 242-245
AI-generated Abstract
Ludo Rocher's scholarship in the field of Dharmaśāstra is showcased through a collection of his significant articles, compiled and edited by Donald R. Davis, Jr. This comprehensive volume spans themes such as the nature of Hindu law, principles of legal procedure, and colonial-era developments in legal thought. Davis critically assesses Rocher's contributions, arguing that Dharmaśāstra should be understood primarily as a scholastic enterprise rather than a practical legal system, and emphasizes the book's importance for those studying Brahmanical thought and its societal implications.
Related papers
Hinduism and Law: An Introduction
2010
Edited by Timothy Lubin, Donald R. Davis Jr., and Jayanth K. Krishnan. Covering the earliest Sanskrit rulebooks through to the codification of 'Hindu law' in modern times, this interdisciplinary volume examines the interactions between Hinduism and the law. The authors present the major transformations to India's legal system in both the colonial and post colonial periods and their relation to recent changes in Hinduism. Thematic studies show how law and Hinduism relate and interact in areas such as ritual, logic, politics, and literature, offering a broad coverage of South Asia's contributions to religion and law at the intersection of society, politics and culture. In doing so, the authors build on previous treatments of Hindu law as a purely text-based tradition, and in the process, provide a fascinating account of an often neglected social and political history. Download: Front matter and introduction.
[Review] A Dharma Reader: Classical Indian Law, by Patrick Olivelle
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 81.2: 372-374, 2018
A Dharma Reader makes Indian sources accessible not just to readers of classical India but to those interested in the comparative study of law and legal history, or in the intersection of religion and law. The Brahmanical Sanskrit literature on dharma (dharmaśāstra) was long bedeviled by mostly ahistorical treatment, and where interpreters attempted to write its history, they were hobbled by the paucity of properly critical editions of the texts and the difficulty of situating the works and their authors in place and time with any confidence. The largest scholarly landmark in this field through much of the twentieth century, P.V. Kane's multi-volume History of Dharmaśāstra, along with careful studies by Robert Lingat, J.D.M. Derrett, Ludo Rocher, and Richard Lariviere, clarified many points and established some historical benchmarks, but the dates offered, especially for the early works, were stabs in the dark, and did not solve the problem of the state of the sources themselves, especially the "classical" works. This situation has changed dramatically with new critical editions by Lariviere (Nārada-Smṛti), Rocher (Vyavahāra-Cintāmaṇi, Dāyabhāga), and most especially Olivelle himself, who has almost single-handedly re-edited and re-translated the major works (the four Dharmasūtras, the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra (the so-called "Laws of Manu"), the Vaiṣṇava-Dharmaśāstra (alias Viṣṇu-Smṛti), and the Yājñavalkya-Dharmaśāstra (forthcoming). The other major scholastic work relevant to India's legal history, Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra (a unique treatise on political science, a topic that was subsequently swallowed up by Dharmaśāstra), has been provided with a new textual study by Olivelle's student Mark McClish, and a new translation by Olivelle himself. All of this work has permitted a tremendous clarification of the development of Dharmaśāstra and, by analysing those works in light of other Sanskrit literature and early Indian epigraphy, of the historical development of law in India. This volume provides an attractive point of entry for students of Indian history, religion, and culture, as well as comparativists. This volume should go a long way towards integrating Indian material into curricula of comparative legal history and legal theory. Olivelle begins by citing (and explaining for non-lawyers) H.L.A. Hart's distinction between primary rules and secondary rules, announces that his book will deal only with the second sort, and goes on to consider Hart's three types of secondary rules: rules of recognition, rules of change, and rules of adjudication. This provides the organizing rubric for the book, with rules of recognition forming the focus of Part I (on "the nature and epistemology of dharma"), and Part II devoted to rules of adjudication (on "courts of law and legal procedure", i.e., vyavahāra). (Ancient India did not have a systematic framework for rules of change; changes occurred either through royal decrees or tweaking the rules of recognition to allow new options, regional customs, or the like, a topic addressed in Part I.) This organization of the material will help those outside of classical Indian studies to make sense of what the Indian authors were up to. ...
The Displacement of Traditional Law in Modern India
Journal of Social Issues, 1968
Contemporary Indian law is, for the most part, palpably foreign in origin or inspiration and it is notoriously incongruent with the attitudes and concerns of much of the population which lives under it. However, the present legal system is firmly established and the likelihood of its replacement by a revived "indigenous" system is extremely small. The modern Indian legal system, then, presents a n instance of the apparent displacement of a major intellectual and institutional complex within a highly developed civilization by one largely of foreign inspiration. This paper attempts to trace the process by which the modern system, introduced by the British, transformed and supplanted the indigenous legal systems-in particular, that system known as Hindu law.
Review of Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra
The Journal of Asian Studies, 2020
not only across London, Delhi, and Bengal but also between political parties and between senior officials and the police on the ground in these three sites. These running debates on whether or not to implement emergency laws indicate that inasmuch as the two went hand-in-hand, there were difficulties in justifying violence within a liberal discourse, a running tension between law and exception.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Related papers
in D. Berti, G. Tarrabout and R. Voix (eds.), Filing Religion, States, Hinduism and Courts of Law, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016, 2016