HINDU LAW. The system of native law prevailing among the Gentoos, and adminis tered by the government of British India.
It is not the law of India or of any de fined region. It is the law of castes, class, orders and even families which the Hindus carry about with them. 17 L. Q. R. 209.
In all the arrangements for the administration of justice in India, made by the British government and the East India Company, the principle of re eerving to the native inhabitants the continuance of their own laws and usages within certain limits has been uniformly recognized. The laws of the Hindus and Mohammedans have thus been brought Into notice in England, and are occasionally referred to by writers on English and American law. The native works upon these subjects are very numer ous. The chief English republications of the Hindu law are, Colebrooke's Digest of Hindu Law, London 1801; Sir Win. Jones's Institutes of Hindu Law, London, 1797. For a fuller account of the Hindu Law, and of the original Digests and Commentaries, see Morley's Law of India, London, 1858, and Mac naghten's Principles of Hindu and Mohammedan Law, London, 1860. The principal English republi
cations of the Mohammedan Law are Hamilton's Hedaya, London, 1791; Baillie's Digest, Calcutta, 1805 ; Precis tie Jurisprudence mussulinane selon le Rite mclikite, Paris, 1848 ; and the treatises on Suc cession and Inheritance translated by Sir William Jones. See, also, Norton's Cases on Hindu Law of Inheritance ; Rattigan, Hindu Law. An approved outline of both systems is Macnaghten'e Principles of Hindu and Mohammedan Law; also contained In the "Principles and Precedents" of the same law previously published by the same author.
See Bryce, Extension of Law in 1 Sel. Es says in Anglo-Amer. Leg. Hist. 597; Ilbert, Government of India ; Sir W. Markby (1906) ; Mulla, Principles of Hindu Law.