Publisher's Synopsis
This volume attempts a jurisprudential understanding of the phenomenon of Hindu law. It rejects the notion that the concept of law is something universal. Rather, it finds that law is one of the various principles of social organization which different civilizations have developed as a result of their particular cosmology and historicity. Thus it is that we have law in the West, Li in China, Dharma in India, or other patterns if Africa. Hindu law appears in this volume as a conceptual system of two layers. Its fundamental layer is of Dharma, whose internal coherence is provided by a system of karma, or duty and not by a system of rights, as in law. Upon this layer is superimposed the Western-style institutions of laws and the techniques of administering it. Through a selection of articles from British, American and German periodicals, this volume points to the basics for understanding the Hindu legal theory, introduces various aspects of Hindu law and provides a glimpse of some recent developments in it.
