The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c14.s1.13

c14.s1.13

It was to this legal literature of the Hindus, especially to the section bearing on inheritance and partition of property that the interest of European scholars was first directed. The plain reason was the exigencies of the newly imposed British administration about the time of the partition of Poland (1772). It is Manu and Yâjñavalkya, therefore, and subsidiarily the "law-books" of Brihaspati, Nârada, Gautama, Âpastamba, Viṣṇu, and Vasiṣṭha, popularized through the *Sacred Books of the East Series*, that obtained currency in the general culture of the nineteenth century. To students of comparative politics these so-called "sacred" books failed necessarily to furnish much data. Rather, on the contrary, this *Series* served to divert the attention of scholars from Hindu achievements in institutional (*samûha*) life, public law, social service and civic administration. All the same, some use of the oriental data has been made by Gomme for folklore and anthropological investigations; Gibelin and Maine succeeded in gleaning a few ideas for comparative jurisprudence; and Nietzsche² threw a new light on sociology by championing the claims of the *Manu Samhitâ* as against the *New Testament* of Christianity.