Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c47.69

c47.69

"The native law of India" as laid down by its own lawyers of unquestioned and unquestionable authority is the other way. It may be the native law of any other land; it is certainly not the native law of India. It is not fair that a popular text-book should embody such a prejudiced and unwarrantable view dogmatically asserted, and asserted without taking the slightest notice of competent discussions on the subject. Wilks in his *History of Mysore* published as early as 1869 has exhaustively dealt with the subject on materials which were accessible to him¹ and which are accessible to Mr. Vincent Smith. Wilks shows that no foundation exists for attributing the feudal theory to Hindu Law. In the '*Introduction to Hindu Polity*' the constitutional view of Hindu literature was pointed out. Professors Macdonell and Keith who cannot be accused of over-liberal sympathy to matters of Indian history have had to admit in their *Vedic Index*² on a survey of all the arguments and materials for the feudal theory that— "the evidence is however inadequate "to prove what is sought; that the Greek "observers are contradictory on the point; that the evidence "adduced from the Vedic literature, and the *Mānava* "*Dharma-Śāstra* and the *Mahā-Bhārata* does not prove the "theory; that the evidence so far as it goes of other Aryan "peoples does not support the theory of original kingly "ownership. Such ownership did not exist so far as can be "seen in Anglo-Saxon times, nor in Homeric Greece, nor "at Rome." The learned authors, however coolly pass by Jaimini, totally ignoring him, although they go to South Africa to find analogy for Vedic India!¹