Appropriation and Invention of Tradition: The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal
Nandini Bhattacharya-Panda
Abstract
The beginning of Anglo–Hindu jurisprudence was occasioned by decisive developments in the cultural, intellectual, and legal history of India. This book deals with the appropriation of the Dharmaśāstras — a powerful written tradition — and its codification, in the construction of Hindu law. It explores the significant connections between this process of formalization and the consolidation of the empire in Bengal. It analyses the shifting administrative and political needs of the colonial regime as well as the perceptions and attitudes of the officials in this process of codification. Through a ... More
The beginning of Anglo–Hindu jurisprudence was occasioned by decisive developments in the cultural, intellectual, and legal history of India. This book deals with the appropriation of the Dharmaśāstras — a powerful written tradition — and its codification, in the construction of Hindu law. It explores the significant connections between this process of formalization and the consolidation of the empire in Bengal. It analyses the shifting administrative and political needs of the colonial regime as well as the perceptions and attitudes of the officials in this process of codification. Through a careful study of the compilations, Vivādarṇavasetu and Vivādabhangārṇava alongside their late eighteenth-century colonial translations, the book brings out the ways in which ancient textual traditions — the prescriptive, normative, and moralistic rules of the Dharmaśāstras — were metamorphosed into legal rules to be directly administered in courts. Investigating the intricate and dynamic links between power and knowledge in the evolution of institutions under colonial rule, this book underlines innovative ways of looking at the legal history of colonial India.
Keywords:
Dharmaśāstras,
Hindu law,
legal history,
colonial India,
codification of Hindu law
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195690484 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195690484.001.0001 |
