Hinduism as a Legal Tradition

The role of law in Hinduism and the value of law as a category of Hindu studies have been underestimated. After making an initial case for the connection of dharma and law in the treatises on religious and legal duty known as Dharmaśāstra, this essay examines the role of dharma as law in other Hindu texts in order to show the possible hori-zons of understanding yielded by an incorporation of law into Hindu studies. Dharmaśāstra, it is argued, should be viewed as a form of legal rhetoric and its formulations of dharma understood as paradigmatic for the Hindu tradition as a whole. Finally, through a comparison with Islam and Islamic studies, the mutual modulations of law and Hinduism are examined in order to see the consequences of juxta-posing these two categories. Open my eyes, so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. —Psalm 119:18 HINDU THEOLOGIES ARE PERVADED by legal rules, legal cat-egories, and legal reasoning. A gigantic textual corpus and scholastic tradition—the Dharmaśāstras—are devoted to Hindu religious and legal duties. An increasing number of studies have appeared that describe th