History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.1065.1

v4.c63.1065.1

Various attempts have been made to explain why in Bengal alone the laws of succession and inheritance should diverge materially from the laws prevailing in the rest of India. In two learned papers 'on the origin and development of the Bengal school of Hindu Law' contributed to the Law Quarterly Review (vol. XXI for 1905 pp. 380-392 and vol. XXII for 1906 pp. 50-63) Mr. Justice Saradacharan Mitra tries at some length to advance a theory of his own: 'The commercial spirit of the newly formed nation in the eastern corner of the Indian peninsula with its deltaic character and nearness to the sea, the new ideas which other nations trading with it were bringing in every day, the necessary admixture of races in some parts of the country, the religion of Buddha which for centuries was here the religion of the sovereign as well as of the people and the influence of the Buddhistic *tantras* combined to bring about a law of property dissimilar in material respects from the rules propounded by Brahmanical sages of old and explained and commented upon in the Mitākṣarā and the books based on the same'.