The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c16.s1.t3.16

c16.s1.t3.16

But probably, so far as actual practice is concerned, the *dharma-śâstras* of India had no greater sanctity than as treatises embodying the “positive morality” of the different ages. Let us therefore examine how the nature of *dharma* (as law) was understood by the theorists themselves. As is well known, law as a category of jurisprudence, has passed through two stages in European thought. The same two concepts we notice in Hindu political philosophy also.