The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s8.t4.1

c14.s8.t4.1

In the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Maratha masses and classes were used in daily life to the Mussalman institutions and practices. The Hindu tradition survived by all means in the more important items of personal and domestic life.⁸ The social polity may in general be taken to have been still governed by the *Manu Samhitā*, and the general *mores* by the *Mahābhārata*. Certain branches of public law, i.e., political life, also, e.g., the land revenue system, the law of property, and agricultural practice remained Hindu to the last although somewhat Moslemized in a few items. But the other branches of public law, i.e., the executive and the judiciary, the army and the police had become Islamic in the main and did not possess more than mere traces of the Hindu institutions.⁹ In the Moslem states of the Deccan and South India the Hindu *personnel* was however always a noticeable feature even in the higher rungs of service.