History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t1.135

v4.c63.t1.135

No branch of Hindu Law in modern times has been so fruitful in litigation as adoption. There are instances, where, fifty years after a point in the law of adoption was deemed to have been settled by a Full Bench decision, the Privy Council intervened and overruled the Full Bench decision in spite of its usual practice to follow the rule of *stare decisis*. The medieval digests are full of varying interpretations of the same smṛti texts and the law of adoption differs from province to province according to the authoritative medieval works and modern case law. Voluminous works like those of Shastri Golapchandra Sarkar and of Mr. Kapur have been written on the subject of adoption in all its details. There is so much bewildering confusion and so much case law on the several aspects of adoption that it is only legislation that can resolve the tangled skein of the modern law of adoption. In this section an attempt will be made to present the law of adoption as evolved by the smṛtis and medieval works and only some important cases bearing in various ways on the ancient law will be cited.