Appropriation and Invention of Tradition : The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal/Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2008, xii, 274 p., ISBN 0-19-569048-6.

    Contents: Preface and acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. The pre-colonial tradition of the Dharmasastras. 2. Hindu law of property and inheritance and the East India Company officials, 1698-1772. 3. Vivadarnavasetu and A Code of Gentoo Laws. 4. Towards a second code: the response to new imperatives. 5. Vivadabhangarnava and A Digest of Hindoo Laws. Conclusion. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.

    "The beginning of Anglo-Hindu jurisprudence was occasioned by decisive developments in the cultural, intellectual, and legal history of India. This book deals with the appropriation of the Dharmasastras--a powerful written tradition--and its codification, in the construction of Hindu law. It explores the significant connections between this process of formalization and the consolidation of the empire in Bengal.

    Bhattacharyya-Panda analyses the shifting administrative and political needs of the colonial regime as well as the perceptions and attitudes of the officials in this process of codification. Through a careful study of the compilations, Vivadarnavasetu and Vivadabhangarnava, alongside their late eighteenth-century colonial translations, she brings out the ways in which ancient textual traditions--the prescriptive, normative, and moralistic rules of the Dharmasastras--were metamorphosed into legal rules to be directly administered in courts.

    The author explores the historiographical debates regarding continuities and change in legal traditions. She argues that the selective appropriation of Dharmasastras regarding division of property and inheritance--to construct a 'Hindu Law'--marked a fundamental intellectual break from the past. In the process of representing and maneuvering them, the colonial government actually invented these traditions.

    Investigating the intricate and dynamic links between power and knowledge in the evolution of institutions under colonial rule, this book underlines innovative ways of looking at the legal history of colonial India. Strongly grounded in primary sources, it will be a useful read for scholars and students of modern Indian history, sociology, and law. It will also interest those concerned with intellectual and cultural history of Bengal." (jacket)

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