Neha Kulkarni : Sir Henry Maine & Hindu Law

1/4 #British: Sir Henry Maine 1822 – 1888.

Born in Scotland.

Comparative jurist & historian.

1847, He was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law.

The post of legal member of council in India was offered to Maine in 1861.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James_Sumner_Maine

British babies who keep sulking over Sati/female rights:

"it follows that the ancient Hindoo law secured to married women, in theory at all events, an even greater degree of proprietary independence than that given to them by the modern English Married Women’s Property Act."

Decay of Hindu law:

Page 821

"Warning you that the account which I have given you of the transitions through which the Roman law of settled property passed, is, from the necessity of the case, fragmentary, I pass to the evidence of early ideas on our subject which is contained in the Hindoo law. The settled property of a married woman, incapable of alienation by her husband, is well-known to the Hindoos under the name of Stridhan. It is certainly a remarkable fact that the institution seems to have been developed among the Hindoos at a period relatively much earlier than among the Romans. But instead of being matured and improved, as it was in the Western society, there is reason to think that in the East, under various influences which may partly be traced, it has gradually been reduced to dimensions and importance far inferior to those which at one time belonged to it."

#Britain #India #Hinduism