Codes
Code of Manu (Manusmriti)
Also Known As Laws of Manu · Manava Dharmasastra
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
The Manusmriti, or Laws of Manu, is an ancient Sanskrit dharmasastra: a treatise of moral and legal instruction rather than a codified body of law shown ever to have been systematically administered by a state. Composed roughly between 200 BCE and 200 CE, it covers duties, family and property relations, and punishments. Its status as positive law is itself disputed among scholars; David Buxbaum wrote that it does not represent rules ever actually administered, but rather an ideal picture. Its chief modern legal significance owes to the British colonial administration, which from 1794, when Sir William Jones translated it as the Institutes of Hindu Law, treated it as binding legal code and used it as the template for Anglo-Hindu personal law covering inheritance, marriage and caste.
Facts
Open Questions
Promulgated Byunknown
No historical evidence shows state promulgation or administration; traditionally attributed to the sage-lawgiver Manu and treated as authoritative dharmasastra, but scholars including David Buxbaum argue no pre-colonial Hindu kingdom is shown to have administered it as binding law. See this entity's open question. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
In Legal System
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
Was the Manusmriti Ever Actually Administered as Law in Pre-Colonial India?
Scholars disagree on whether the Manusmriti was ever actually administered as binding law by a pre-colonial Hindu state, or whether it was always an aspirational, idealized ethical treatise. David Buxbaum wrote that it does not represent a set of rules ever actually administered in India and is in great part an ideal picture, and no historical evidence has been shown of any Hindu kingdom systematically enforcing its provisions. The question is sharpened by the text's own instability, with over fifty inconsistent manuscript versions surviving, and by the fact that its status as law was substantially the product of British colonial administrators, who from 1794 treated it as a legal code for their own administrative purposes and used it to construct Anglo-Hindu personal law.
What would resolve this A documented pre-colonial judicial record or royal decree citing Manusmriti provisions as the operative rule of decision, independent of the later colonial-era Anglo-Hindu law tradition, would show the text was administered as law rather than read as ethical instruction.
Legal HistoryManusmriti (Wikipedia)
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.