Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.464

c7.464

Indian customary law has received due consideration only in the English epoch. The official census reports (of 1891) ¹ contain the most up-to-date and the best materials, of which, of course, only the chapters on age and sex, civil condition, marriage and castes, tribes and races come into consideration for legal affairs and social condition. The value of this monumental work is enhanced by numerous statistical tables and charts². Risley's "Tribes and Castes of Bengal" Vols. 1, and 2 appeared simultaneously along with his "Ethnographic Glossary" (Calc. 1891 f.)—an alphabetical list of Bengali castes containing also descriptions of their customs and usages. The older works about castes should be discussed in State-antiquities.³ The Gazetteers contain a full geographico-statistical description of India which however, in part, are of an older date. In what follows particularly the Bombay Gazetteer Vols. 1-24 have been used, whose exhaustive descriptions of caste usages, especially of the Brahmans, afford excellent materials for the history of laws and customs. The well-known Imperial Gazetteer of India by Hunter in 14 volumes (second edition Lond. 1885-87) is an alphabetical sketch of all the Gazetteers¹, and the sixth volume of the same work contains an historico-political outline. The two following works which have been much used in this treatise are based on official enquiry about the castes—Tupper's "Punjab Customary Law" (3 volumes Calc. 1881) and Steele's "The Law and Custom of Hindoo Castes within the Dekhun Provinces" (second edition, London, 1868). They contain a full treatment of the customary law in the Punjab and in Bombay. The land tenure system is discussed in Baden-Powell's "Manual of the Land Revenue systems and Land Tenures" (Calc. 1882). Grierson in his well-known work "Bihar Peasant Life" (Calc. 1885) has described the life of the farmers in Bihar; it also possesses considerable importance for antiquarian researches on account of the rich linguistic materials which show many points of agreement with the phraseology of the Smritis.