Hindu law

“ Even so the nine rules of conduct prescribed by Hindu sacral law are, according to his view, the directing rules of Roman, Greek, Germanic, Celtic, Slavonic legal custom—the duties in regard to gods, parents and fatherland, guests, personal purity, the prohibitions against homicide, adultery and theft—are variations of one and the same religious, moral and legal system, and their original unity is reflected and proved by the unity of legal terminology itself. ”

“ Otherwise the mere pact or agreement not within the cognizance of the priests was but a matter for self-help. Hindu law shows the idea of religious duty to keep faith in full vigor. In the Hindu system the relation between the parties to a debt is not legal but religious and now that a law has grown up under English influence it is said that there is a legal obligation because there is a religious obligation. A man is bound in law because and to the extent that he is bound in religion and not otherwise and no more. To the Hindu lawyer a debt is not an obligation merely. ”

“ The question does in fact involve many material as well as social and religious considerations, as matters of personal law are largely governed by ancient custom in the different communities, and the point at issue was whether it is possible for a Hindu to cease to be subject to Hindu law. More recent attempts to make civil marriage lawful have failed hopelessly. ”

“ Law has also responded to religious needs in recognizing juristic persons other than human beings. Thus, in the Hindu law an idol has standing in court to enforce its rights. See e.g., Pramatha Nath Mullick v. ”

“ For every person in the world whose rule of civil conduct is based upon the English system of jurisprudence there are two others to whom Hindu law is both binding by political authority and the rule of conscience. ”

“ In regard to matters of family law, inheritance and succession, religion and caste the company’s courts were expressly enjoined to apply the Hindu law to the Hindus, and the Mahommedan law to the Mahommedans. Of course it was also the duty of these courts to recognize well-established local usages. Thus practically all the topics of litigation at that time likely to arise were provided for. It was as time went on, when by intercourse with Europeans new ideas, and with them new wants, sprang up in the native populations, that gaps came to be discovered in the law. ”

“ It is one of the inconsistencies of the Hindu's thinking that he, at the same time, worships a tribal god in whose hands he believes his affairs to be, and through whom prosperity can flow into his life for time and eternity; and yet he holds, with equal, yea with greater, persistence, the law of Karma, that is, the law of works, according to which law alone future life, both to himself and to all men, must be wrought out even to the last detail. ”

“ The beneficent nature of these institutions as a whole may be judged of from their effects on the character of the Hindu race. Perhaps there are no other people in the world who show so much in their characters the advantageous effects of their own civilization. They are shrewd in business, acute in reasoning, thrifty, religious, sober, charitable, obedient to parents, reverential to old age, amiable, law-abiding, compassionate towards the helpless, and patient under suffering. ”

“ The average Hindu, who cannot live permanently in the altitudes of pantheistic thought, regards his gods as great natural forces, akin to the mighty rivers which he also worships, irresistible and often beneficent but also capricious and destructive. Whereas Judaism, Christianity and Islam all identify the moral law with the will and conduct of the deity, in Hinduism this is not completely admitted in practice, though a library might be filled [168] with the beautiful things that have been said about man and God. ”

“ The Hindu now is in his stronghold; custom, the custom of their fathers, is to them immutable law; but from this you drive him, and force him to acknowledge that the example of his ancestors is no excuse for wrong-doing, and then you seek to make him feel the weight of sin, that he may turn to Christ as a Saviour of sinners. ”

“ There is, in fact little to rouse the intelligence of Hindu children in places far from a railway station and reached only by a fair-weather road or a cart-track, and it seems to me that if the Hindu religion were not so much neglected in government schools, there might be a desire on the part of parents to let their children learn the things that the Education Department is so anxious to teach them, for with Hindus religion is not only a duty but, also, a stimulus. ”

“ The heroes of the Râmâyana are somewhat tame and commonplace personages, very respectful to priests, very anxious to conform to all the rules of decorum and duty, doing a vast amount of fighting work mechanically, but without the determination, the persistence of real fighters. A change has come over the spirit of the nation. It is more polished, more law-abiding, less sturdy, less heroic. In brief, the two epics give us the change which Hindu life and society underwent from the commencement to the close of the Epic age. ”

“ Many violate these rules; yet to kill a Brahman is still one of the five great Hindu sins. In the present age of the world, the Brahman may not accept a gift of cows or of gold; of course he despises the law. As regards monkey worship, a certain Rajah of Nadiya is said to have expended 10,000L in marrying two monkeys with all the parade and splendour of the Hindu rite.]
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[ The celebrated Gayatri, the Moslem Kalmah.]
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[ Kama again.]
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[ From “Man,” to think; primarily meaning, what makes man think.] ”

“ The Hindus have for centuries been governed by their own laws, which they regard not as the edicts of a political sovereign, nor as the enactments of a human legislature, but as the immutable commands of the Supreme Being of the universe. With such reverence have these laws been regarded that no Hindu king of whom we have any historical record ever dared to repeal, alter or modify one of them. ”

“ In undertaking any legislative measure, the Council is bound to be guided by the principles of Mahomedan law, the tenets of the Hindu shastras, the special laws of every community residing in His Highness's Dominions, the customs and usages having the force of law and the jurisprudence of British India or other civilised countries. No Act of the Council, nor any power granted to it, can in any way affect the rights and prerogatives of His Highness as the supreme ruler of the State. ”

“ I do not care to argue this point, more especially in the case of the Hyderabad State, where all women — both Mahomedans and Hindus — of the higher classes (with a few notable exceptions) , live behind the curtain. We have seen in the new census that Hindu working-women in the Dominions are engaged in almost every kind of business, and that they show a marked aptitude for trade and possess a keen money-making instinct. And we have read in the education reports that the schools for girls of the upper classes in Hyderabad city are as good, if not better, than similar places in British India. ”

“ India’s contributions to the world’s study of philosophy, science, religion, and social organization are legion. While the continent of Europe was still in a state of barbarism, the Hindus invented the sciences of grammar, arithmetic, and astronomy. They were already masters of a perfect alphabet, of a polished language, and of the most complete systems of law and social ethics that the world has ever seen. When the forefathers of the Anglo-Saxon races roamed in forests with painted bodies, the Hindus had an extensive literature, an established religion, and a developed civilization. ”

“ In regard to India, therefore, you must not look only into her condition today, but travel back in imagination thousand of years, and see what she was in ancient times of primitive Hindu simplicity and purity. Even in the earliest books of the Hindus, the Vedas, which must be regarded as the earliest record of Aryan faith – even in them you find glimpses of high moral and religious truths which are unmistakable – not duly formed and organised religious thought, but the crude instincts and aspirations of the human mind in the state of religious infancy, seeking the Deity. ”

“ He never thinks nor is he commanded by his religion to think, of aught but outward conformity to a moral code which is altogether inadequate to keep, direct and inspire him in life. This difficulty is, of course, enhanced when we remember that in the whole realm of Hindu life—whether it be of gods or of men—there is no one who looms up as a perfect example. It is therefore little wonder that in India today morality is at so low an ebb and that even the code which prevails there is so sadly and universally violated. ”

“ That the government itself should treat high and low, the poor ryot and the wealthy rajah, the ignorant Pariah and the cultured Brahman as one in their claim for right and protection, for justice and for favour, seemed to the Hindu absurd. It is one of the best commentaries on British justice and administration in India, that the people have now come not only to regard it with satisfaction, but also as an indispensable condition of their life. ”

“ India, Progress and Condition, Blue Book presented to Parliament, 1873, p. 99. “It is asserted (but the assertion must be taken with reserve) that it is a mistake to suppose that the Hindu religion is not proselytizing. Any number of outsiders, so long as they do not interfere with established castes, can form a new caste, and call themselves Hindus, and the Brahmans are always ready to receive all who submit to and pay them.” ”

“ Government schools are too strict as regards clothes and cleanliness to suit illiterate parents, and they prefer to pay a few dubs to a Hindu school-master, who in some small, ill-ventilated room will teach the boys to repeat by heart some well-known Hindu legends, and to do a little bazaar arithmetic.
There is no gainsaying that while the government is most anxious to educate the masses, employers, in country places, are just as desirous to keep them in slavish ignorance. The sowcars, too, hinder education all they can. ”

“ When such an evil is intrenched behind the religion of the people and is symbolized and fostered by its emblems and ceremonies—when tasies, or women dedicated to the Hindu gods and temple worship (there are 12,000 of these in South India alone) , constitute the public characters of the land—then the hope for the purification of life is at the lowest ebb.
It is also very rare that one finds a Hindu whose convictions and loyalty to certain beliefs are such that he is willing to suffer in their behalf. ”

“ I venture to disagree with a member of His Highness's government in his opinion that the illiteracy of the masses in Hyderabad State is largely due to the fact that the girls of the lower classes are kept totally ignorant. It seems to me that the whole environment of the people in the districts is at fault, and that a desire for more education will come when roads open up the districts, the jagirdars are brought to a sense of their great responsibilities as landlords, and some Hindu religious text-book is introduced into the primary schools. ”

“ But courts of justice have gone much further, and held dissenting sects which have sprung out of the Hindu community, such as the Sikhs, to be Hindus, although they do not believe in the authority of the Vedas and do not observe any distinction of caste. And Hindu society now practically admits within its pale all persons who are Hindu by birth, whatever their beliefs and practices may be, provided they have not openly abjured Hinduism or married outside of Hindu society. ”

“ Hindu Period.—The ancient history of Hyderabad is written eloquently in its ruins, and probably no area of similar size in India contains so many interesting records of the past as H. H. the Nizam's Dominions. ”

“ From the rudest polytheism up to pantheism, and even to an atheistic philosophy, all is within the Hindu pale, like fantastic cloud shapes and vague mist and empty ether, all within the same sky. To the student of Hinduism, then, the first fact that emerges is that there are no distinctive Hindu doctrines. No one doctrine is distinctive of Hinduism. There is no canonical book, nowhere any stated body of doctrine that might be called the Hindu creed. The only common measure of Hindus is that they employ brahmans in their religious ceremonies, and even that does not hold universally. ”

“ If so, we must regard the Hindus as in the very mire of moral debasement. Just think of a whole people acting like Shiva, Doorga, and Krishna! I think it cannot be doubted by any one who looks at the nature of the human mind, and the power exercised over it by its [Pg 339] belief, that the worship of these and similar gods, along with the prevalent pantheistic and fatalistic views, which strike at the very root of moral distinctions, have done much to deprave the Hindu mind. The people, indeed, often assert "to the powerful there is no fault." ”

“ Nor can it avail one to advance the seemingly unanswerable objection that treating of as they do a state of society divided from the real present by a huge and abyssmal gulf of time, such works can by no means serve as useful and faithful guides to the life and manners of Hindu society existing at this day. "In India," as Professor Monier Williams justly remarks, "the lapse of centuries is powerless in effecting radical changes in the foundation and constitution of Hindu society." The conservative character of the Hindu nation is proverbial. ”