Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.475

c7.475

As yet there is no monographical treatment of the whole history of law which shall be attempted here. The ancient Indian law of inheritance and a part of the family law, on account of their extraordinary practical importance, have been very frequently dealt with, specially by English and Indian jurists. The older works of this sort,—those by Sir Th. Strange and his son Th. L. Strange, by Macnaghten, Morly, S. G. Grady and others, possess now only historical value. Of the more up-to-date treatises, particularly West and Bühler's Digest of Hindu Law (3rd.ed. Bombay 1884) and Mayne's Hindu Law and Usage (Lond. 1878) have been used here. The former work discusses in detail the laws prevalent in Bombay, the latter those in the whole of India; both the works have not only practical purposes but also historical purposes in view and the former contains Bühler's introduction quoted above which laid the foundation to the history of the Smṛtis. H. H. Wilson's "Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms" (Lond. 1855) still remains indispensable. Mandlik's "Hindu Law" (Bombay 1880) contains useful gleanings from various sources which are scarcely available in Europe, although there are many mistakes in it. A series of volumes of the Tagore Law Lectures appearing in Calcutta, deals with the law of inheritance or a part thereof,—such as Cowell's "Hindu Law" etc. (1870-72, three volumes), G. D. Banerjee's "Marriage and Stridhan" (1879), T. Mitra's "The Hindu Widow" (1881), R. Sarvadhikari's "Law of inheritance" (1882), my own "Outlines of an History of the Hindu Law of Partition, Inheritance, and Adoption" (1885), G. Sarkar's "Hindu Law of Adoption" (1891), etc. I have elsewhere attempted a monographical treatment of the law about women, the law of debt, the system of Indian law, the documents and child marriage¹. A. Mayr in his work "Das indische Recht"