The World’s Legal Systems – Lecture 8
Hindu Law
The teacher wants to talk about last time’s lecture, whether there is something that is unclear and
whether there is something that we might want her to clarify. The teacher will be trying to explain
these concepts once again in the context of how or what is the mode of dispute resolution with respect
to the vyavahara. There are certain terms that the teacher will explain once more.
Caritra
One is the term ‘caritra’. Caritra is considered to be a condition of the vyavahara or dispute resolution
and means that whatever a person practices, whether it be in accord with dharma or not, is declared
to be caritra because it is the invariable usage of the country. How is this a source of law in dispute
resolution? It doesn’t have anything to do with dharma, which is self-regulation, and it also doesn’t
have anything to do with the macrocosmic aspect of the world, the fact that you are interlinked with
everybody else and that this is a broader cosmic duty. It is just about practice and understanding this
practice as being a source of law or something for an individual person to think about when he or she
performs actions or performs his or her dharma.
What could be evidence of caritra? It could be documentary evidence, but it could be oral evidence as
well. And this really doesn’t mean that the practice of the country or the practice of a particular region
or the practice of a local social group/cast group is documented or is in writing, but sometimes people
do have knowledge about it in terms of what are the kinds of practices that a particular group follows.
That is something that one can have recourse to if one wants to think about how one resolves any kind
of dispute. Caritra itself serves as a source of dharma. What Werner Menski says, is that you cannot
really understand it as a set of procedures or something that you should submit to the court in the way
you have an (…) or some technical set of documents. It has more to do with practice or how people
live. That is what is the term caritra in the context of the vyavahara.
The teacher would just like to briefly go to Menski’s triangle. If one wants to understand law, one
cannot merely understand it in the context of the left side of the triangle, which is the state. You need
to understand it in a more composite way, which is in the context of religion, ethics, society and the
state. So when he is talking about religion, ethics and morality he is also talking about questions of
natural law and how one can draw from natural law in order to even formulate certain kinds of legal
norms. Law is a product of all these three processes and when you have legal pluralism or you have
different kinds of legal orders, it depends on all three. And in this particular presentation we try to talk
about what happens when you veer to one side of the triangle or to the other side of the triangle. We
will also try to talk about whether something like veering to one side of the triangle is suitable for
certain societies, for instance a society like India. Is it more suitable for it to veer towards the state or
to veer towards society? This is the broad framework which we need to keep in mind before we go
into the history of Hindu law.
Hindu Law
The teacher wants to talk about last time’s lecture, whether there is something that is unclear and
whether there is something that we might want her to clarify. The teacher will be trying to explain
these concepts once again in the context of how or what is the mode of dispute resolution with respect
to the vyavahara. There are certain terms that the teacher will explain once more.
Caritra
One is the term ‘caritra’. Caritra is considered to be a condition of the vyavahara or dispute resolution
and means that whatever a person practices, whether it be in accord with dharma or not, is declared
to be caritra because it is the invariable usage of the country. How is this a source of law in dispute
resolution? It doesn’t have anything to do with dharma, which is self-regulation, and it also doesn’t
have anything to do with the macrocosmic aspect of the world, the fact that you are interlinked with
everybody else and that this is a broader cosmic duty. It is just about practice and understanding this
practice as being a source of law or something for an individual person to think about when he or she
performs actions or performs his or her dharma.
What could be evidence of caritra? It could be documentary evidence, but it could be oral evidence as
well. And this really doesn’t mean that the practice of the country or the practice of a particular region
or the practice of a local social group/cast group is documented or is in writing, but sometimes people
do have knowledge about it in terms of what are the kinds of practices that a particular group follows.
That is something that one can have recourse to if one wants to think about how one resolves any kind
of dispute. Caritra itself serves as a source of dharma. What Werner Menski says, is that you cannot
really understand it as a set of procedures or something that you should submit to the court in the way
you have an (…) or some technical set of documents. It has more to do with practice or how people
live. That is what is the term caritra in the context of the vyavahara.
The teacher would just like to briefly go to Menski’s triangle. If one wants to understand law, one
cannot merely understand it in the context of the left side of the triangle, which is the state. You need
to understand it in a more composite way, which is in the context of religion, ethics, society and the
state. So when he is talking about religion, ethics and morality he is also talking about questions of
natural law and how one can draw from natural law in order to even formulate certain kinds of legal
norms. Law is a product of all these three processes and when you have legal pluralism or you have
different kinds of legal orders, it depends on all three. And in this particular presentation we try to talk
about what happens when you veer to one side of the triangle or to the other side of the triangle. We
will also try to talk about whether something like veering to one side of the triangle is suitable for
certain societies, for instance a society like India. Is it more suitable for it to veer towards the state or
to veer towards society? This is the broad framework which we need to keep in mind before we go
into the history of Hindu law.
