Indian law was based in the moral codes of the Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions.. Like Chinese justice, Indian justice encouraged local resolution, through community tribunals bas
Trang 1or other family members in avoiding an inauspicious day or
failing to adequately perform ancestral rituals, funerals, and
marriages Any of these acts would cause demons and
ma-ligned spirits to impose their reprisals and thus lead to the
human crime
Indian law was based in the moral codes of the Hindu and
Buddhist religious traditions Law was conceived as dharma,
the duty or obligation of proper conduct relative to the needs
of society over those of the individual The Dharmasastra
texts prescribe the obligations and penalties appropriate to
caste and social status Like Chinese justice, Indian justice
encouraged local resolution, through community tribunals
based in caste, trade, artisan, family, sect, and village society
Each community could establish and apply its own customs
and procedures; in theory, there was no hierarchy among
these frequently overlapping, community-based institutions
Indian Dharmasastra law was the ideal rather than an
absolute, and it was above all intended to make practical legal
decisions based on common usage rather than on a written
code of law Legal decisions were in the best interests of the community, to maintain local societal harmony consistent with the community’s political, economic, religious, or he-reditary hierarchy As did the Chinese, Indians believed that
in an orderly hierarchical society, if members behaved ac-cording to what was expected of their social rank, righteous-ness would surely prevail Physical penalties were rare, and there are few records of severe fines Instead, legal decisions mandated restitutions or public admission of wrong and commitment to acceptable behavior Subsequent offenses re-sulted in boycotts or expulsions Rare death penalties were subject to a king’s review before an execution
Kings involved and asked the guidance of Hindu and Buddhist clergy, scholars of Dharmasastra, before making le-gal decisions In the absence of an inclusive bureaucrat system, Indian kings might exercise their legal authority directly, or more commonly through their delegated agents who would travel the countryside on their behalf A royal agent’s local judicial intervention resulted from a community’s failure to make their own resolution If a legal appeal reached the court,
a court tribunal sent officials to gather the facts of a case, and
to determine the common practice of the groups involved From the local community’s perspective, such royal legal in-tervention was undesirable, since the king’s justice ultimately served the king’s rather than the community’s interests Legal interventions frequently discovered local improprieties that resulted in unintended fines, penalties, or additional taxes Thus, as in China, state interventions were infrequent, and local resolution was the norm
Six text-based traditions of law developed in Southeast Asia during the medieval era In each case the legal system localized either Indian or Chinese legal culture The
Bur-mese dhammathat (dharma) and Thai-Lao thammasat legal
traditions consisted of numerous texts that incorporated
India-derived Buddhist modifications of Dharmasastra law
according to local needs Cambodian law developed in the era of the Angkor-based court (eighth to 14th century) and made similar local modifications of the Indian Dharmasas-tra Hindu and Buddhist legal codes Numerous Sanskrit and Khmer temple inscriptions highlight issues of landholding and labor rights as they relate to royal patronage of Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines In Vietnam the 15th-century Hong Duc code marked a Confucian departure from previous reliance on Buddhist codes of law The new secular law code,
in common with the old, included significant local modifica-tions that were consistent with prevailing Vietnamese social practice, with notable concern relative to local landholding, social, and ritual practices as these related to royal authority Javanese law, which was codified in the 14th-century Majapahit court, was also Indic inspired with local variation
Folio from a Khamsa of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, showing a priest
bringing a marriage document; ink and color on paper, Sultunate
Period, India, 1450–1500 (Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Purchase, F1959-2)
laws and legal codes: Asia and the Pacific 605