Indeterminacy in dating and elusive modes of intertextuality often confound attempts to establish reliable relative chronologies for classical South Asian texts. Occasionally, however, the relationship between two texts clearly reveals the dependence of one upon the other. Such is the case for the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya and the Mānava Dharmaśāstra, arguably the two most important classical treaties on law and statecraft. Close reading of the two reveals a direct relationship wherein the seventh adhyāya of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra took its general (...) structure and most of its material from the Arthaśāstra.The clarification of this general relationship makes possible an appreciation of the manner in which Manu appropriated material from Kauṭilya’s treatise and allows us to draw new conclusions and raise new questions about the intellectual and cultural history of the period. (shrink)

The well-known classification of legal procedure into “four feet” presents certain conceptual problems for the Indian legal tradition that various Smṛtikāras and commentators have attempted to resolve in different and sometimes contradictory ways. These difficulties arise because the four feet originally referred in Indian legal theory to four distinct, hierarchical legal domains rather than procedural means for reaching a verdict. The earliest attested discussion of the four feet, found in Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, indicates that early legal theorists understood the greater legal (...) order as being comprised of four hierarchical domains and that these domains were ordered by the state as expressed in the original formulation of the four feet. Among the four legal domains, that of vyavahāra was developed by the state itself as a realm of public, transactional law meant to address disputes that could not be resolved in other legal forums. From this we can conclude that the origin of Indian jurisprudence lies with state efforts to formalize and enforce the laws of public transactions. The reinterpretation of the four feet by later jurists was motivated perhaps by resistance to one of the fundamental relationships expressed in the four feet, namely that royal authority possessed the greatest legal authority, independent of Brāhmaṇical law. (shrink)

Against Dharma: Dissent in the Ancient Indian Sciences of Sex and Politics. By Wendy Doniger. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Pp. xvi + 226. $26.

Fortified Cities of Ancient India: A Comparative Study. By Dieter Schlingloff. Cultural, Historical and Textual Studies of South Asian Religions. London: Anthem Press, 2013. Pp. 110. £60, $99.

The Traditional Kerala Manor: Architecture of a South Indian Catuḥśāla House. By Henri Schildt. Institut français de Pondichéry / École française d’Extrême-Orient, Collection Indologie, no. 117. Pondicherry: Institut français de Pondichéry / École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2012. Pp. xiv + 473, 436 plates. 1400 Rs., €60.