Framed comparatively rather than doctrinally, Hindu law denotes the body of legal rules, drawn chiefly from the Dharmasastra textual tradition, that British colonial administrators from 1772 onward applied as personal law to Hindus in India rather than imposing English common law uniformly. The foundational text used for this purpose was the Manusmriti, which colonial officials treated as a code although it originated as a religious-ethical treatise. Two major regional schools developed, Mitakshara across most of India and Dayabhaga in Bengal and Assam, identified as such in an 1869 Privy Council case. Religious doctrine on dharma itself is treated in the atlas's sibling coverage of Hinduism; this entry describes the comparative-law category as colonial administrators and legal scholars constructed and applied it.
Facts
Origin Year1772 marks British colonial administrators choosing to apply separate religion-based personal law rather than uniform English common law. The operative text, the Manusmriti, is separately dated by mainstream scholarship to between 200 BCE and 200 CE, and the underlying Dharmasastra tradition is older still. Example JurisdictionsBritish India; Hindu-law-influenced practice historically extended into Cambodia, Java, Bali, Malaysia, Thailand and Burma 1 Primary Source of LawThe Dharmasastra or Smriti textual tradition, led by the Manusmriti, as reinterpreted and applied as positive law by British colonial courts 2 Classification
Legal Family Hindu Law
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Connections
Associated With
Source Law of India (Wikipedia)
In Legal Family
Entity-backed identity for the legal family value this legal-system already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a legal-system entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
In Legal System
Family classification carried over from this entity's own recorded SubLabel (Religious Law Systems), assigned under the section-legal-systems structure wave (ruling 761) using the CIA World Factbook / JuriGlobe comparative-law family classification (system.Atlas.DataBrief, law). This edge materializes that existing classification as a connective fact; it is not a new independent research finding.
Includes
Source Manusmriti (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Divinity Atlas: Hinduism, originated there.
- Also in Geography Atlas: Asia, found in there.
- Also in Geography Atlas: Cambodia, found in there.
- Also in Geography Atlas: Malaysia, found in there.
- Also in Geography Atlas: Myanmar, found in there.
- Also in Geography Atlas: Thailand, found in there.
Sources
1. Hindu Law (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia- Introduction section
- Hindu law is based on the Hindu texts, the ancient term is Dharma
2. Manusmriti (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIn British India section
mistook the Manusmriti as codes of law and resurrected Manusmriti, constructed statements of positive law from the text for non-Muslims.
- Includes: Code of Manu (Manusmriti), Colonial-Era Codification section
View the Source Law of India (Wikipedia)
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