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Recovering the Indigenous Legal Traditions of India: Classical Hindu Law in Practice in Late Medieval Kerala

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Abstract

The collection of Malayalam records entitled Vanjeri Grandhavari, taken from the archives of an important Namputiri Brahmin family and the temple under its leadership, provides some long-awaited information regarding a wide range of legal activities in late medieval Kerala. The organization of law and the jurisprudence represented by these records bear an unmistakable similarity to legal ideas found in dharmaśāstra texts. A thorough comparison of the records and relevant dharma texts shows that landholding Namputiri Brahmins, who possessed enormous political and economic power in the region, mediated the implementation of dharmaśāstra into the legal system. From this comparison arise new understandings of law and legal categories such as ‘custom’ and ‘positive law’. Moreover, such comparisons begin to elucidate the problems involved in Western assumptions that it is textual law, not its interpretation and application by humans, which controls behavior. The Vanjeri records demonstrate not only the importance of dharmaśāstra as a historical document but also the manner and extent to which dharmaśāstra provided the foundation for legal systems in Kerala as well as in other regions of India.

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  1. University of Texas, Austin, TX, 78712, U.S.A

    Donald R. Davis Jr.

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Davis, D.R. Recovering the Indigenous Legal Traditions of India: Classical Hindu Law in Practice in Late Medieval Kerala. Journal of Indian Philosophy 27, 159–213 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026483519342

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