Abstract
The Sanskrit term dāya is generally understood as inheritance. This study examines an influential inheritance treatise from medieval Bengal, the Dāyabhāga, to explore how dāya conceptually overlaps with gifts, even though in inheritance, the deceased does not physically hand over the inheritance to the heir, a situation which appears remarkably distinct from gift-giving. Recent Euro-American research has explored the overlap between gift and inheritance considering primarily testate situations. However, attention has not been paid to this overlap by Indological scholarship, though abundant work on Hindu inheritance exist. Apart from certain debates regarding etymology of dāya, there has not been much scholarly reflection on the conceptual understanding of dāya, perhaps due to the practical application of Hindu law during its times. This article, through a close textual study of the Dāyabhāga, attempts to fill in a small gap by demonstrating a conceptual overlap between inheritance and gifts, not just in testate, but in intestate situations (considered common in the Dharmaśāstras) as well. The study suggests that dāya is, in essence, gift-like, even though there are distinctions between gifts and inheritance.
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Acknowledgements
This article has benefited from the suggestions and feedback of the anonymous reviewer and the following scholars. Many thanks to Donald Davis, Patrick Olivelle, Joel Brereton, Oliver Freiberger, and Cynthia Talbot for helpful comments on an earlier version of this study. I thank participants of the 223rd Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society for their comments. I gratefully acknowledge support from the Department of Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, and Taraknath Das Foundation (South Asia Institute, Columbia University). Any errors are my own.
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The acknowledgments state the sources of funding for this work, as well as the names of scholars who were most closely associated with it. This article has been developed from one of my PhD dissertation chapters at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a revised version of it. I cannot think of any conflict of interest at this time.
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Dutta, M. Dāya: The Conceptual Understanding of Inheritance and Gift in the Dāyabhāga. J Indian Philos 47, 111–131 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-019-09380-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-019-09380-7