INTRODUCTION
In 1967, Robert Lingat published Les sources du droit dans le système traditionnel de l'Inde.Footnote 1 It would become perhaps the most important monograph on dharmaśāstra, the expert tradition on Hindu law. Lingat titled the second half of his book, Du dharma au droit, in English, “From Dharma to Law.” There he offers an account of how la droit positif developed in South Asia out of reflection on sacred duty: how “the rule of dharma, which possesses authority for society, could receive from it that constraining force which turned it into a rule of law.”Footnote 2
According to Lingat, the origin of law in South Asia can be traced in the early dharmaśāstra literature, a genre of texts that gives expression to the Brāhmaṇical orthodoxy and orthopraxy of the period. The first dharmaśāstra texts are conventionally known as Dharmasūtras, and Lingat argues that their Brāhmaṇa composers were interested in teaching the dharma, or “sacred duty,” of individuals in society.Footnote 3 Infractions of dharma were considered violations of divine command and cosmic order to be remediated through penance.Footnote 4 One also finds in the Dharmasūtras, however, “precepts of a juridical character,”Footnote 5 which is to say “rules which people may be constrained by an external or physical sanction to observe and which amount to specifically juridical duties.”Footnote 6 For Lingat, these represent, at least in form, the “rules of law”Footnote 7 within the dharmaśāstra corpus. Infractions of them are violations of the “temporal order, which derived from the king's power.”Footnote 8 Such rules were not included in the Dharmasūtras because of any independent interest in state law or the temporal order, but only insofar as a rule of this kind might also happen to express a sacred duty, “to certify the virtue of the act in question.”Footnote 9
Nevertheless, “[t]hough fairly scanty in the dharma-sūtras, precepts of a juridical character took a more and more important place in the dharma-śāstras. At the same time, they were expressed in a more and more certain and scientific form.”Footnote 10 Indeed, the later Dharmaśāstras of Nārada, Bṛhaspati, and Kātyāyana are almost wholly concerned with such rules. Lingat accounts for their articulation as part of the unfolding obligation of Brāhmaṇas to instruct on the dharma of kings:
Their intervention seems to have been a consequence, a natural prolongation of the teaching of dharma; it was imperceptibly and almost by force of circumstances that spiritual preceptors had to emerge as jurisconsults. Having to teach the duties of the four varṇas [i.e., social classes], they could not fail to specify those which were particular to the Kṣatriyas [i.e., nobles and warriors]… . To the Kṣatriyas, and especially to him amongst them who is chosen to be king, belong equally the cares of government and the mission to ensure peace amongst the subjects by a good administration of justice.Footnote 11
Motivated by an obligation to teach the king's dharma and spurred on by the increasing service of Brāhmaṇas as royal counselors and jurisconsults, dharmaśāstra authors gradually gathered various secular customs and forged them into tracts meant to advise judges in state courts.Footnote 12 Hence, the first stages of a protracted journey “from dharma to law.”Footnote 13
Lingat's model relies on a number of assumptions that have come under critique, not least of which is the exclusive association of law with the state.Footnote 14 Few, however, have questioned what I see as one of his core assumptions, namely that the law of state courts, called vyavahāra, emerged within the dharmaśāstra tradition, motivated by expanding reflection on dharma. We might refer to as an orthogenetic modelFootnote 15 of state law in South Asia, according to which it emerged as an “internal development of Vedic thought.”Footnote 16 The Vedic tradition coalesced around the beginning of the first millennium BCE in the form of various Brāhmaṇical lineages that developed methods for transmitting the sacred scriptures called the Vedas and the elaborate sacrificial cult to which they were attached. In the middle and latter half of the first millennium, these Brāhmaṇical lineages composed ancillary texts called Vedāṅgas (limbs of the Veda) that focused on disciplines such as grammar, lexicography, and astronomy, which were necessary to support the study of the Vedas and the proper performance of the sacrifice. Among these Vedāṅgas were the first Dharmaśāstras, texts instructing on the education of Vedic students, the conduct of Brāhmaṇas and other classes, and the practice of statecraft, including state law.
The dharmaśāstra tradition was active for around two millennia in South Asia, roughly the third century BCE to the eighteenth century CE.Footnote 17 The early dharmaśāstra texts encode Brāhmaṇical orthodoxy and orthopraxy as they had developed within the lineages of the Vedic tradition. They are eclectic collections of rules covering a broad array of social practices, such as diet, hospitality, purity, ritual, education, vocation, dispute resolution, and statecraft. Rules for the state are given under the rubric of rājadharma (the sacred duties of kings or the sacred laws for kings). The principal component of rājadharma across the early dharmaśāstra texts is vyavahāra, rules for the adjudication of disputes between private parties in royal courts. Over the first thousand years of the dharmaśāstra tradition, vyavahāra went from a minor, even ancillary, topic to the main focus of the most important dharma texts. In the earliest phase of the tradition (ca. third century BCE to first century CE), vyavahāra is treated only cursorily, although interest in it does seem to grow during this time. In the mature phase of the tradition (ca. second–eighth centuries CE), vyavahāra becomes one of the main topics of dharmaśāstra. By the fifth century it had become the most important dharmaśāstra topic, with texts such as that of Nārada (ca. fifth–sixth centuries CE) and Kātyāyana (ca. seventh–eighth centuries CE) devoted almost exclusively to vyavahāra and Bṛhaspati (ca. seventh–eighth centuries CE) concerned preponderantly with it.Footnote 18
An orthogenetic model proposes that the waxing of vyavahāra within dharmaśāstra is itself a record of the emergence of state law in South Asia and that the impetus behind the codification and development of rules on vyavahāra was to support the social conditions necessary for the flourishing of the Vedic tradition.Footnote 19 Such a reading conforms with influential theories of the origin of law offered by scholars like Henry Sumner Maine and Max Weber. Maine argued that law emerged historically as it disentangled itself from religion and morality.Footnote 20 Weber posited a process of “rationalization” by which law emerged from out of “charismatic legal revelation through ‘law prophets.’”Footnote 21 Both scholars saw proof of their theories in the early dharmaśāstras, even though both believed that the full development of law in South Asia had been attenuated under the influence of a dominant priestly class.Footnote 22 The view persisted among most British scholars that dharmaśāstra was “representative of an early phase of legal evolution in which law and religion were originally confused, then began to be separated.”Footnote 23 Some have dissented from this position because they do not consider law and religion to have been confused originally in dharmaśāstra Footnote 24 and others because they find that dividing dharmaśāstra into “law” and “religion” distorts the tradition.Footnote 25 But few have questioned whether the law of royal courts evolved within dharmaśāstra at all.
This essay does not aim to establish the nature of law, its relation to religion, or its ultimate origin in South Asia. Instead, I will present historical evidence that vyavahāra, the law of royal courts, did not emerge within the tradition of dharmaśāstra nor within the Vedic tradition more generally. Moving forward arguments made by Meyer,Footnote 26 Vigasin and Samozvantsev,Footnote 27 and Olivelle and McClish,Footnote 28 among others, I argue that vyavahāra emerged as part of a broad but coherent expert tradition of statecraft, called, variously, kṣatravidyā (the discipline of rule), daṇḍanīti (leading by the staff), rājaśāstra (the royal science), or arthaśāstra (the science of success). The formalization of rules of vyavahāra was prompted not by a need to articulate the sacred duties of kings or preserve the social conditions necessary for the flourishing of the Vedic tradition, but by the needs of political leaders to process disputes over everyday transactions arising among their subjects. The appearance of rules related to vyavahāra in the early dharmaśāstra texts should not, I argue, be read as a process of emergence, disentanglement, or rationalization, but instead as a process of appropriation. As part of this appropriation, the rules of vyavahāra were borrowed from a more or less secular context within the statecraft tradition and provided with a fictional origin (the Vedas) and embedded in a new normative framework (dharma), both of which obscured their early history and particular normative characteristics. It is this early history of vyavahāra that I hope to reclaim in this essay, demonstrating that the development of vyavahāra in ancient India was characterized not by a transition from dharma to law, but by a transition from law to dharma.
VYAVAHĀRA, DHARMAŚĀSTRA, AND LAW
The term vyavahāra itself has many meanings, which are explored throughout this article, but as a technical legal term its general semantic range is captured best by the term litigation.Footnote 29 As a body of law, vyavahāra contains rules to be used by royal judges when reaching a decision in a dispute between private parties.Footnote 30 The earliest definition of vyavahāra comes from the Dharmaśāstra of Yājñavalkya (ca. fourth to fifth century CE):
If someone has suffered an injury inflicted by others in a manner that is opposed by smṛti [e.g., the Dharmaśāstras] or the norms of conduct, and he makes this known to the king, that is a subject of litigation (vyavahāra).Footnote 31
Vyavahāra is initiated when one party to a private transaction feels themselves to have suffered an injury by the other party and voluntarily files a formal complaint with a royal court. The rules of vyavahāra are divided between procedural guidelines, sometimes called vyavahāramātṛkā (the source of vyavahāra), and the norms governing private transactions themselves, called vyavahārapadas (the feet of vyavahāra). These rules are not themselves described as being legally binding, but serve as authoritative guidelines for reaching a verdict, which is then to be enforced on the litigants by the king.Footnote 32
The many legal meanings of vyavahāra—whether litigation, legal procedure, rules governing transactions, lawsuit, or, simply, law—all converge on one feature that defines vyavahāra over against all other rule sets and normative orders presented in the dharmaśāstras: vyavahāra is understood exclusively, paradigmatically, and unambiguously as the law practiced in royal courts. Instruction on vyavahāra is directed toward the king and his judicial officials and not to any other legal authority. The substantive rules of vyavahāra are applicable only to disputes adjudicated by royal judges.Footnote 33 So close is the connection between vyavahāra and state courts that vyavahāra becomes the term for the legal procedure of those courts itself. Our sources sometimes advise state officials to make formal decisions based on other bodies of rules, and such cases might imply the existence of other kinds of state courts or tribunals.Footnote 34 But, only vyavahāra is discussed in any detail and unambiguously associated with a widespread tradition of courtroom law, one described more or less consistently over the course of centuries. For that reason, I refer to vyavahāra generally—both its procedural and substantive rules—as the law of royal courts and sometimes call it state law as shorthand, even though it must be recognized that by this I am referring only to the state's activity in the adjudication of private disputes. Certainly, much within vyavahāra has little to do with state interests or practices, and the relationship between the state and law in ancient India was much broader and more complex.
When we encounter vyavahāra rules in the early dharmaśāstras, however, they are also presented as dharma, or sacred duty. According to the dharmaśāstra tradition, illustrious sages of the past gathered the sacred injunctions scattered throughout the divinely revealed Vedas and organized them into the dharmaśāstras.Footnote 35 It would follow from this that every rule presented in the dharmaśāstras is a divine command expressing a sacred obligation.Footnote 36 Specifically, rules of vyavahāra are rendered within dharmaśāstra as part of rājadharma (the sacred laws for kings). As such, they express a sacred royal duty to resolve disputes among the king's subjects.Footnote 37 Their procedural and substantive rules would also, as dharma, appear to represent the sacred duties of judges and individuals who are party to a private transaction, respectively.Footnote 38 As dharma these rules are no longer advisory: they are binding. Sanction for their breach is automatic and occurs through unseen mechanisms of enforcement that bring negative consequences in both this life and the next, such as karma or divine punishment.
Framing rules of vyavahāra as dharma in this manner ascribes to them an additional set of normative characteristics that complicates their authority, object, and intent. This created interpretive problems for medieval dharmaśāstra commentators, who disagreed on the legal authority of the vyavahāra rules in their root texts.Footnote 39 Efforts were made to distinguish between dharmaśāstra rules that express sacred obligations, those that express temporal obligations, and those that express both. The well-known jurist and commentator Medhāthiti, for instance, argued that most vyavahāra rules were not based on the Veda and therefore did not carry sacred authority,Footnote 40 while others interpreted all dharmaśāstra rules as sacred injunctions. The result is that, in the words of Lariviere, “[t]here is … a lack of unanimity on the subject of the Vedic basis for each injunction in the dharmaśāstras.”Footnote 41
We might say, then, that vyavahāra as part of dharmaśāstra is normatively overdetermined. Establishing the source of a rule of vyavahāra (divine/temporal), its legal authority (binding/advisory), its object (king/judge/litigant), and its purpose (public order/upholding dharma) all depend on certain interpretive choices. Scholars like Maine, Lingat, and Derrett see vyavahāra as normatively distinct from dharma based on formal differences between each as different types of rules, particularly based on a distinction between “legal commands” and “religious commands.”Footnote 42 For such scholars, the concept of “law” is most pertinent to the analysis of dharmaśāstra as a means of distinguishing vyavahāra from other parts of dharmaśāstra, which must be classified as something other than law, such as “ritual” or “religion.”Footnote 43 Other scholars have championed the traditional dharmaśāstra hermeneutic that rules of vyavahāra can only properly be understood as part of dharma.Footnote 44 They argue that, because the tradition generally did not see vyavahāra rules as fundamentally distinct from other rules of dharma, neither should we. Vyavahāra, it would follow, is not the legal part of dharmaśāstra. Instead, the concept of dharma, consisting of an eclectic variety of rule sets and normative complexities, represents a uniquely Hindu approach to law itself.
This is not the place to engage in an extended survey of the issues at stake,Footnote 45 but I think that it is misguided to champion either of these approaches as invariably preferable. It seems to me that both have their merits, and a review of the secondary literature shows that nearly all dharmaśāstra scholars use the term law productively in at least two ways: (1) to describe certain parts of dharmaśāstra, particularly vyavahāra, over against the rest; and (2) to describe all of dharmaśāstra.Footnote 46 Here, it may be useful to recall Twining's distinction “between law as an analytic concept, law as an organizing concept, and law as a rough way of designating a scholarly field or focus of attention.”Footnote 47 If we want to engage in a formal analysis to differentiate the normative characteristics of rules in the dharmaśāstra corpus, it will make sense to use an analytic concept of law. If we want to understand the connection between these rules, we may want to use an organizing concept of law. If we want to explain the history or form of a given text or passage, we may find it productive, even necessary, to alternate between different approaches.Footnote 48
I identify vyavahāra in my title as law not because I wish to deny that status prima facie to other parts or aspects of dharmaśāstra nor because I wish to champion a specific definition of law, but because from a historical perspective vyavahāra did exist as a legal tradition—as law—prior to its incorporation into dharmaśāstra and the attendant reconfiguration of its normative characteristics. Lingat's argument is that dharmaśāstra was, in origin, something other than law and that it gave birth to law, primarily in the form of vyavahāra: “from dharma to law.” My argument is that vyavahāra was already law, and when it was integrated into dharmaśāstra, it became dharma: “from law to dharma.” This formulation renders vyavahāra-as-dharma as the explicandum and implies that it is something other than “law.” This is only an unfortunate artifact of the difficulty in translating between legal cultures. It might be preferable to say that vyavahāra was a kind of law that became another kind of law within dharmaśāstra, but that would make a terrible title. At any rate, I leave such analyses to future studies. The purpose of this article is to establish the initial independence of the legal tradition of vyavahāra from dharmaśāstra as a historical fact, albeit one that bears on the proper understanding of their theoretical relationship.
VYAVAHĀRA IN VEDIC TRADITION
There is no discussion focused on vyavahāra or dispute resolution in Sanskrit literature before the first dharmaśāstras (discussed below), although certain legal principles found in the dharmaśāstras can certainly be traced in texts of the Vedic tradition.Footnote 49 Rather more productive for understanding the emergence of vyavahāra as a legal tradition is an examination of the development of the term vyavahāra and related forms in the Vedic tradition up to the period of the early dharma texts.Footnote 50
Etymologically, vyavahāra breaks down into two preverbs (vi + ava = vyava) and the verbal root hṛ, meaning to bear. The earliest use of forms derived from vyava + hṛ can be found in texts of the Early and Middle Vedic periods (ca. 1200–600 BCE). The Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā of the Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda refers to a bali offering made during the ṛtugraha offerings as vyavahāra.Footnote 51 The meaning of the term there is not entirely clear, but it may mean an offering that has been “used” or “exchanged” by parties during the rite. The verbs vyavāharanta and vyavaharanti occur in the same passage of the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa, where both simply mean “to make use of” or “to employ,” in this case, the sacred fire, Agni.Footnote 52 A similar meaning is found also in later texts. The early lexicographer Yāska, whose date is uncertain,Footnote 53 once uses the gerund vyavahṛtya as “having engaged” in battle.Footnote 54
A more specific set of meanings comes into focus in texts of the Late Vedic period (ca. 600–300 BCE), most notably in the grammatical literature. In his Aṣṭādhyāyī (ca. 500 BCE), Pāṇini observes that the verb vyava + hṛ can have the same meaning as the verbal root paṇ, which means “to buy and sell” or “to gamble.”Footnote 55 Elsewhere Pāṇini uses vyavaharati to mean “to conduct business” or “to conduct one's affairs.”Footnote 56 A connotation of commercial activity is evident in texts of the ritual tradition.Footnote 57 The Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra twice uses the verb vyavahāret to mean “he should pay off” someone's debts.Footnote 58 In the Bhāradvāja Gṛhyasūtra, the desiderative participle vyavajihīrṣamāṇa refers to one “desiring commerce.”Footnote 59 This sense is found also in texts of the dharma literature, where vyavahāra can mean “trade” as an economic activity.Footnote 60
In texts of this period, vyavahāra also pertains to everyday life. Yāska uses the expression vyavahārārthaṃ loke to mean “with regard to everyday affairs in the world.”Footnote 61 These are presumably the commonplace activities on which daily life depends.Footnote 62 Several of the domestic ritual manuals from this period possess a rule that, as part of the rite for a newborn, a child is given a vyāvahārika name on the tenth day.Footnote 63 This is a name “for everyday use.” The meaning here points to the quotidian and the commonplace: what people actually do in everyday practice.
Yāska's use of the term implies that vyavahāra was not simply characterized by its quotidian absence of formal characteristics, but could be identified by its own particular features. This aspect of vyavahāra is evident in Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya (ca. 150 BCE), a commentary on the Aṣṭādhyāyī. Patañjali uses vyavahāra nine times, all referring to particular usages of language.Footnote 64 Vyavahāra appears four times as the second member of a noun compound to denote “the linguistic conventions of” a given group.Footnote 65 These refer to the actual performance of speech acts, and Patañjali confirms that norms of such usage could be gleaned by observation.Footnote 66
Most of the meanings examined so far relate in some fashion to aspects of interpersonal interaction, and we find vyavahāra used in the ritual literature simply to mean interaction. We read that individuals who have performed a rite called the vrātyastoma are vyavahārya (to be interacted with).Footnote 67 Several of the domestic ritual texts contain the instruction: nainān upanayeyuḥ | nādhyāpayeyuḥ | na yājayeyuḥ | naibhir vyavahareyuḥ (They should not initiate them, they should not instruct them, they should not officiate at sacrifices for them. They should not interact with them).Footnote 68 Such interactions were probably liable to be conceptualized in terms of transactions. Weber provides an extract of the commentary of Yājñikadeva on this passage in the Kātyāyana Śrautasūtra, who glosses vyavahārya with vivāhayājanabhojanādiyogyāḥ (suitable for marriage, officiating at sacrifices, and eating with).Footnote 69
Nowhere among any of these texts do we observe vyavahāra used as a legal term. Vyavahāra and related forms in the Vedic tradition instead exhibit a semantic range marked by conceptions of use, usage, everyday life, linguistic usage, vernacular language, commerce, interaction, and transaction. In all of these cases, vyavahāra is something that is embedded, and observable, in actual practice. It is easy to see how these ideas might give birth to a conception of law based on authoritative standards guiding everyday transactions and exchange. It is only a small step from observing the features of such practices to reifying norms for them. However it finally occurred, the inflection point where vyavahāra came to delineate law or litigation is not to be found in the Vedic tradition. For that we must turn to other sources.
VYAVAHĀRA IN EARLY POLITICAL AND BUDDHIST SOURCES
The earliest datable use of vyavahāra as a legal term comes in a third-century BCE edict of the Mauryan emperor, Aśoka. His inscriptions are the first Indic texts that are known to have been produced by a king or political leader. They are not written in Sanskrit, the language of the Vedic tradition, but in a Prakrit called Māgadhī, the chancellery language of the Mauryan Empire. The edicts draw upon a technical political vocabulary only partly reflected in Brāhmaṇical and Buddhist sources of the period. They provide us our earliest glimpse into the Indic statecraft tradition.
This tradition of statecraft seems to have emerged in South Asia along with a new wave of urban polities around the sixth century BCE. We hear for the first time of kṣatravidyā (the science of rule) as a distinct area of learning in a text of that period, the Chāndogya Upaniṣad,Footnote 70 as well as Pāli literature of the following centuries.Footnote 71 The oldest extant representative of this tradition is the celebrated Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya (ca. first century BCE to third century CE). While it is difficult to surmise how representative the Arthaśāstra might be, the shared technical vocabulary and practices witnessed across inscriptions and texts of the period point to a common tradition of statecraft prevailing among the urbanized polities of north and central South Asia.Footnote 72 This is particularly evident with respect to the legal tradition of vyavahāra, whose characteristic features are recognizable in divergent sources from the period.
Aśoka uses the term viyohāla (Sanskrit: vyavahāra) in his fourth pillar edict (ca. 246 BCE). In this edict, the emperor expresses a desire for his regional officials, called Lajūkas, to practice “uniformity in viyohāla” (viyohālasamatā) and “uniformity in punishment” (daṇḍasamatā). The relevant passage reads as follows on the Delhi-Toprā pillar:
In order that they should perform (their) duties, being fearless, confident, (and) unperturbed, for this (purpose) I have ordered that either rewards or punishments are left to the discretion of the Lajūkas. For the following is to be desired, (viz.) that there should be both impartiality in judicial proceedings [viyohālasamatā] and impartiality in punishments [daṇḍasamatā]. And my order (reaches) even so far (that) a respite of three days is granted by me to persons lying in prison on whom punishment has been passed, (and) who have been condemned to death.Footnote 73
Aśoka is addressing here the judicial responsibilities of the Lajūka.Footnote 74 In requesting uniformity in punishment, Aśoka presumably means that the Lajūka should make sure that different individuals receive the same punishment for the same crime. The meaning of “uniformity in viyohāla” is less clear. The context confirms that Aśoka has some kind of legal activity in mind, but interpreters are divided on its meaning, whether legal proceedings, legal procedure, or something else.Footnote 75
In another pair of edicts, Aśoka addresses different judicial officials, called the Nagala-viyohālakas (Sanskrit nagaravyāvahārika) or Nagalakas (Sanskrit nāgaraka), which Hultzsch translates as “judicial officers of the city.”Footnote 76 Aśoka instructs them as follows:
Now you must pay attention to this, although you are well provided for. It happens in the administration (of justice) that a single person suffers either imprisonment or harsh treatment. In this case (an order) cancelling the imprisonment is (obtained) by him accidentally,Footnote 77 while [many] other people continue to suffer. In this case you must strive to deal (with all of them) impartially. But one fails to act (thus) on account of the following dispositions: envy, anger, cruelty, hurry, want of practice, laziness, (and) fatigue. (You) must strive for this, that these dispositions may not arise to you. And the root of all this is the absence of anger and the avoidance of hurry. He who is fatigued in the administration (of justice), will not rise; but one ought to move, to walk, and to advance.
…
For the following purpose has this rescript been written here, (viz.) in order that the judicial officers of the city may strive at all times (for this), [that] neither undeserved fettering nor undeserved harsh treatment are happening to [men]. And for the following purpose I shall send out every five years [a Mahāmātra] who will be neither harsh nor fierce, (but) of gentle actions, (viz. in order to ascertain) whether (the judicial officers), paying attention to this object … . are acting thus, as my instruction (implies).Footnote 78
Aśoka appears to address here the issue of “uniformity” (samatā) raised in the fourth pillar edict. His instructions imply that the Nagala-viyohālaka is a courtroom judge tasked with sentencing criminals and overseeing their incarceration and/or punishment. The emperor is well aware that some people in his realm receive better or worse treatment than others for the same offense without good reason. This might explain what Aśoka was addressing with the term daṇḍasamatā in the fourth pillar edict, but we learn here little about the meaning of viyohāla. For that, we can only draw on the title of the Nagala-viyohālaka. To the extent that his title identifies him as some kind of justice or legal officer of the city, we might presume that viyohāla had a relatively broad meaning, perhaps equivalent to the administration of justice or law itself.Footnote 79
These offices and this nomenclature almost certainly did not originate with Aśoka. A judge called the Vohārika (Sanskrit vyāvahārika) appears several times in the Pāli monastic code (Vinayapiṭaka).Footnote 80 In the Mahāvagga, King Bimbisāra asks the Vohārikas to pronounce the punishment proper for someone who gives ordination to a servant of the king.Footnote 81 In the Cūlavagga, the Vohārikas are asked to confirm whether the Jeta Grove had indeed been formally sold when Anāthapiṇḍika agrees to beat the prince's rhetorical valuation of the land: “I would not give the grove to you, o householder, even for the price of one hundred thousand.”Footnote 82 The Suttavibhaṅga refers to an “old judge” (purāṇavohāriko mahāmatto).Footnote 83 Although he had gone forth as a Buddhist monk, the old judge has his professional experience called upon when he is asked to relate the amounts for which King Bimbisāra would have a thief flogged, imprisoned, or exiled.
In the Bhikkunīvibhaṅga, Vohārikas are asked to confirm whether a disputed storeroom had been lawfully given to the Order of Nuns.Footnote 84 The passage is worth citing at length since it offers a clearer sense of the scope of their legal activities:
Saying: “Was it given (or) not given?” they asked the chief ministers of justice [vohārike mahāmatte]. The chief ministers spoke thus: “Who knows, ladies, if it was given to the Order of nuns?” When they had spoken thus, the nun Thullanandā spoke thus to these chief ministers: “But, masters, was not the gift seen or heard of by you as it was being given, eye witnesses having been arranged?” Then the chief ministers, saying: “What the lady says is true,” made over the store-room to the Order of nuns. Then that man, defeated, looked down upon, criticised, spread it about, saying: “These shaven-headed (women) are not (true) recluses, they are strumpets. How can they have the store-room taken away from us?” The nun Thullanandā told this matter to the chief ministers. The chief ministers had that man punished. Then that man, punished, having had a sleeping-place made for Naked Ascetics not far from the nunnery, instigated the Naked Ascetics, saying: “Talk down these nuns.” The nun Thullanandā told this matter to the chief ministers. The chief ministers had that man fettered. People looked down upon, criticised, spread it about, saying: “How can these nuns have a store-room taken away (from him) and secondly have him punished and thirdly have him fettered? Now they will have him killed.”Footnote 85
In this passage, the Vohārikas are asked to confirm the validity of a gift. They also act as witnesses to the gift and punish one of the donor's sons and his accomplices when solicited by the nuns.Footnote 86 Although it is a literary representation of the judge's activities, we can presume the actions prescribed are at least plausible representations of their actual function.
The dating of the Vinaya texts is uncertain, but Aśoka was almost certainly using a technical legal term that was already in circulation. This suggests that by the beginning of the third century BCE, and probably earlier, judges were called by the title Viyohālaka/Vohārika/Vyavahārika and that viyohāla/vyavahāra was the term most closely associated with the law of royal courts. The Arthaśāstra twice mentions an official called the Paura-vyāvahārika, a synonym of Nagala-viyohālaka,Footnote 87 but it is found nowhere to my knowledge in the Dharmaśāstras, which use different titles for such judges. As to its locus of origin as a legal term, the Pāli sources show us something else of interest. Although the term vohāra is relatively common there, it almost never refers to law or litigation. The most prominent exception is in the title vohārika. From this we can deduce that vyavahāra did not emerge as a legal term from out of the Buddhist tradition. Rather, the Pāli texts give every appearance of using an official title originating within the political tradition.
In the political and Prakrit sources, the Vohārika is identified as a mahāmātra, or high official of the state. The activities ascribed to this figure in the Vinaya converge on two areas of law: private transactions (vyavahāra) and punishments (daṇḍa).Footnote 88 Regarding the former, state judges act as witnesses to transactions and settle disputes based upon them. Of the latter, they are asked about appropriate punishments and, in the Bhikkunivibhaṅga, have individuals punished who are deemed to have committed crimes. It is possible, therefore, that Aśoka's use of viyohāla relates in some manner to transactions, probably in the extended sense of judicial activity related to disputes arising out of transactions. His concern with uniformity focuses on the impartiality of judges, and we can presume that this is as true for viyohāla as it is for daṇḍa. In the case of viyohāla, impartiality might have manifested through the use of uniform standards to render judgements in different cases. It may be that Aśoka has in mind adherence to something like what we find in the Arthaśāstra: uniform guidelines governing the proper form of transactions as well a judicial procedure.
VYAVAHĀRA IN THE ARTHAŚĀSTRA
The Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya is a Sanskrit manual of statecraft that dates in its original form to about the first century BCE.Footnote 89 Its third book, called Dharmasthīya (On Justices) presents the earliest comprehensive vyavahāra code in South Asian history. This section was probably drawn from one or more preexisting sources that presented rules to be used by royal judges in processing disputes arising out of transactions.Footnote 90 The third book does not explicitly call its subject vyavahāra, but it begins with the instruction that the king's justices, called Dharmasthas, should look into vyavahārika artha (matters arising out of transactions).Footnote 91 The scope of activity assigned to the Dharmastha conforms to some of the judicial activities of the Voharikas as outlined in the Pāli texts. Rules are given first regarding the determination of the validity of transactions,Footnote 92 an activity we witness the Vohārikas carrying out in the Bhikkhunīvibhaṅga. After this, rules of judicial procedure are given.Footnote 93 Most of the rest of the third book is made up of guidelines for the proper form of various transactions. These are presented over nineteen chapters under seventeen headings, which I group into the following eight categories:
1. Family law:
• Marriage
• Inheritance
2. Property law:
• Immovable property
• Boundary disputes
3. Community law:
• Nonobservance of conventions
4. Law of debts:
• Nonpayment of debts
• Deposits
5. Labor law:
• Slaves and laborers
• Partnerships
6. Law of transactions:
• Cancellation of sale or purchase
• Nondelivery of gifts
• Sale by nonowner
7. Assault:
• Robbery
• Verbal assault
• Physical assault
8. Miscellaneous:
• Gambling and betting
• Miscellaneous
Some of these sections were augmented or added during the redaction of the text,Footnote 94 but this list gives us a reasonably clear sense of the types of transactions that could underlie a vyāvahārika artha and the fact that the code principally contained the normative forms of such transactions as conceived by justices.Footnote 95 This would appear to have been the bulk of their training, the majority content of vyavahāravidhi as a discipline.
The signal feature of vyavahāra as a legal concept in the Arthaśāstra is that it pertains to instances in which an aggrieved party brings a suit against another party in a royal court. The Arthaśāstra indicates that such cases can concern a wide variety of material transactions as well as theft and assault up to, but not including, murder.Footnote 96 We can presume that vyavahāra courts were widespread in ancient India based on the references just examined and that such courts were overseen by a judge with a title such as Nagalaka, (Nagala)viyohālaka, Vohārika, and Dharmastha. The penalties ascribed to various types of misconduct in the third book of the Arthaśāstra are monetary,Footnote 97 although it is implied elsewhere in the Arthaśāstra that vyavahāra courts had their own jails or prisons.Footnote 98
The Arthaśāstra also gives us some sense of how vyavahāra was conceived in relation to the greater legal order. The text bears witness to a legal typology called the four feet of dispute that identified four different types of norms bearing on the resolution of disputes in royal courts.Footnote 99 They are, in descending order of authority, the king's command (rājaśāsana), private customary law (caritra), vyavahāra, and dharma. In this model, vyavahāra refers specifically to the kinds of substantive rules governing transactions that comprise most of the Arthaśāstra’s third book. It is, however, only one of four different types of rule sets or normative orders that might bear on a dispute that has come before a justice. The most authoritative kinds of rules were those contained in royal edicts. If such a rule could be found that had bearing on the case at hand, it had authority. Next in authority were any customary laws that the litigants might recognize, presumably because they were members of the same caste, guild, village, extended family, or other private group. If so, the king's justice was to decide the case based on such customary law. Failing both a relevant royal edict and common customary rule, then vyavahāra had authority. As a last resort, the justice could be guided by dharma, which probably carries here a more generic sense of “righteousness” than it does as a term of art in Brāhmaṇical orthodoxy. Whereas dharmaśāstra makes vyavahāra a subset of dharma, and thereby infuses the former with the normative characteristics of the latter, the original formulation of the four feet considered vyavahāra to supersede dharma.
This gives us some sense of how the substantive rules of vyavahāra operated within the greater legal order. They served as something of a legal backstop, able to be called upon by kings when customary rules were, for whatever reason, insufficient to resolve a dispute between private parties. The most interesting aspect of vyavahāra is that it was a body of state law that was not imbued with superseding legal authority, as is the case with the legislation of modern nation states. It served rather to undergird a complex and plural legal order, actually reinforcing the legitimacy of the customary law of private groups. At the same time, it could have served as a jurisprudential framework for the occasional exertion of legal norms by kings: the Arthaśāstra tells us that the king had the power to strike down any unrighteous custom (caritra),Footnote 100 in which case the relevant rule of vyavahāra would come into effect. Presumably the unexcelled power of the royal edict provided a legal basis for such moves, but so might a more nebulous justification through dharma. Such interventions are, however, presented as the exception, and the structure of the greater legal order meant that customary law would remain the preferred means for dispute resolution in royal courts.
Whatever may have become of the vyavahāra tradition in later eras, it is not imagined in the Arthaśāstra as a kind of scholastic or theoretical jurisprudence disconnected from the practice of courtroom law. Even if justice was not understood to result from the interpretation and direct application of substantive norms, the form of the vyavahāra suggests that it was developed as a practical jurisprudence—made up of both procedural and substantive elements—that trained royal judges to navigate within a complex legal order. Its emergence is most easily explained not by a need to articulate the sacred duties of kings, but by the necessity of legal authorities to establish norms for everyday transactions to assist in the resolution of disputes between subjects adhering to different varieties of customary law. The necessity for kings and other political leaders to develop such a legal mechanism is self-evident. It may be, then, that the emergence of vyavahāra-type rules is connected to the growth of cosmopolitan spaces, such as cities, in which transactions between members of different social groups were routine. Understood as a legal procedure and a body of substantive rules, vyavahāra would have enabled the management of a plural legal order as well as regulatory intervention into markets and the prevention of feuding behaviors between private groups.
What makes vyavahāra unique among the various normative orders of ancient India is not only its exclusive association with the state, but also the degree to which it represents a formalization of the processes of law: establishing norms, delineating procedures for their application, and systematizing a penology as sanction for their breach. It is, in this sense, the archetypal law of the state. And it is in the Arthaśāstra where we see vyavahāra in its native context: the statecraft tradition. Although we should presume a degree of overlap between the Vedic tradition and the statecraft tradition in the period, there is nothing in the sources examined so far to indicate that vyavahāra originated as part of the intellectual efforts of the orthodox Brāhmaṇical lineages. It appears to be quite unknown to the Vedic tradition before the era of the dharma texts. Even if the particulars are lost to history, the general form and early development of vyavahāra can be gleaned from royal inscriptions, early Buddhist scriptures, and the Arthaśāstra. No doubt there were local variations and historical changes, but the commonalities in technical terms and content among these sources are sufficient for us to conclude that vyavahāra names a widespread tradition of state law in ancient India passed down as part of a larger body of statecraft practice and instruction traceable to at least the beginning of the third century BCE and perhaps originating with the statecraft tradition itself.Footnote 101
VYAVAHĀRA IN THE EARLY DHARMA TRADITION (THIRD CENTURY BCE TO SECOND CENTURY CE)
If the statecraft tradition gives us a view into the common intellectual framework within which kings and counselors undertook the practice of governance, the early dharmaśāstras represent a different cultural context entirely. The origin of the dharma literature can be traced among the Vedic lineages.Footnote 102 These revered teachers were promulgating the shared norms of conduct that delineated Brāhmaṇical orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Such rules are overwhelmingly concerned with the social and ritual life of respected village Brāhmaṇas, even if we presume that some with such training did go on to serve in royal courts.Footnote 103 The earliest of the dharmaśāstras, the Āpastamba Dharmasūtra, gives us our best view of the context from which the dharma tradition arose. It is overwhelmingly concerned with rules for Brāhmaṇas, with one significant addition: rules for kings, principally made up of rules for vyavahāra.Footnote 104
The Āpastamba Dharmasūtra has been dated to the third or early second century BCE, roughly contemporaneous with or slightly later than the reign of Aśoka and a century or two before the composition of the original Arthaśāstra (ca. first century BCE). Āpastamba begins by establishing the sources of its rules on dharma,Footnote 105 then introduces the subjects that focus its discussion: the four social classes called varṇas.Footnote 106 Thereupon, the text goes on to discuss, for the most part, rules for Brāhmaṇa students and householders that are applied mutatis mutandi to the other social classes. The discussion of the four varṇas is formally concluded at Āpastamba Dharmasūtra 2.25.1a:
We have explained the general and specific dharmas of all the varṇas.Footnote 107
Insofar as Āpastamba introduces his text as a discussion of the dharmas of the social classes, this passage would appear to mark its conclusion.
As it has come down to us, however, the Āpastamba Dharmasūtra does not end with this passage, but possesses another five chapters, which are introduced as such:
Now, we will explain those [dharmas] of the king, because they are distinctive.Footnote 108
What follows are instructions on the dharmas of kings, which is recognizably a tract on statecraft.Footnote 109 It discusses many of the same topics that we find in Arthaśāstra, such as the conduct of the king, construction of the royal palace, appointment of royal officials, collecting taxes, and, above all, rules of the vyavahāra-type, which make up most of the tract.
Although the Arthaśāstra does not appear to have been the source of these five chapters, we can be confident that another statecraft text was. I have shown elsewhere that the concept of rājadharmas is used in the passage just cited as a euphemism for a body of rules of statecraft, rather than sacred obligations of the king per se.Footnote 110 Most importantly, however, these rules for kings are not integrated within the framework of the dharmas of the social classes, a convention that is universally adopted by dharma texts after Āpastamba. What we see in Āpastamba is a phase in which rules on statecraft were first being added to an older corpus of rules focused on the conduct and practices of respected Brāhmaṇas, but among which they were yet to be fully integrated. It is not clear when the final chapters of Āpastamba were composed or added, but their instructions (particularly on the construction of the king's residence) are primitive in comparison to the teachings of the Arthaśāstra.
In comparison with the Arthaśāstra, the vyavahāra-type rules in Āpastamba are not very extensive. Only a few topics are covered, and these in a piecemeal fashion:
• Sexual law
◦ sexual misconduct and assault
■ punishments (2.26.18–2.26.21)
■ royal maintenance for victims or expiation (2.26.22–2.27.1)
◦ levirate (2.27.2–2.27.7)
◦ adultery (2.27.8–2.27.13)
• Other crimes and punishments
◦ offenses by a Śūdra (2.27.14–2.27.15)
◦ offenses by a Brāhmaṇa (2.27.17–2.27.20)
◦ who may pardon (2.27.21)
• Rules protecting owners and masters
◦ rules for sharecroppers and herdsmen (2.28.1–2.28.6)
◦ obligation to return escaped cows (2.28.7–2.28.9)
◦ expropriation and theft (2.28.10–2.28.12)
• Miscellaneous rules
◦ king's obligation to punish (2.28.13)
◦ guilt of accomplices (2.29.1–2.29.2)
• Ownership of marital property (2.29.2–4)Footnote 111
The orthogenetic model relies on an interpretation of this tract as an embryonic stage in the development of state law. What Āpastamba shows us, however, is the opposite. Whoever added these chapters to the Āpastamba Dharmasūtra was selectively presenting specific points of law from what can only have been a more comprehensive tradition of courtroom law. It is not surprising, therefore, that rules protecting special privileges for Brāhmaṇas find their place. But a review of the entirety of Āpastamba demonstrates that vyavahāra is foreign to the main concern of the text, which, like the Vedic literature that preceded it, never uses vyavahāra as a technical legal term.Footnote 112 We have seen that Aśoka was already using vyavahāra to mean something like “law” in this period, and that this practice most likely predated him. In all, Āpastamba confirms that the concept of vyavahāra did not develop its technical legal connotations in the Vedic tradition generally nor in the dharma literature specifically.
The next two Dharmasūtras chronologically are those of Gautama and Baudhāyana, both of which may date to around the first century BCE or slightly earlier. Baudhāyana has clearly undergone extensive redaction, making it difficult to assign a single date to the text.Footnote 113 Like Āpastamba, both contain tracts on the duties of kings that focus primarily on vyavahāra-type rules.Footnote 114 But, unlike Āpastamba both integrate these teachings within the main body of their instructions on the dharmas of the social classes. In addition, both Gautama and Baudhāyana use vyavahāra as a technical legal term in the sense of “having obtained vyavahāra.” This is a reference first found in the Arthaśāstra to the age at which someone is authorized to engage in valid transactions.Footnote 115 The concept implies a normative, proto-legal understanding of vyavahāra.
Gautama is far advanced of both Āpastamba and Baudhāyana in his technical discussion of vyavahāra. The text is the first of the dharma corpus to use vyavahāra to mean something close to law itself:
And [the king's] vyavahāra is: Veda, Dharmaśāstras, Ancillaries, Minor Vedas, and Purāṇa. The laws of regions, castes, and families are authoritative when they are not opposed by sacred texts. Farmers, merchants, herders, lenders, and artisans each among their own group. Having consulted on cases with them according to authority, there is an establishment of dharma.Footnote 116
The meaning of the term vyavahāra is not entirely clear here, but it seems likely that Gautama is referring to the tradition of the law of state courts, specifying that they take Brāhmaṇical scriptures as their authoritative guidelines.Footnote 117 In the context of what we have already learned, we must interpret this as an orthodox intervention into the practice of vyavahāra. Rather than conduct his courtroom law based on rules from a text like the Arthaśāstra, which is to say rules from the statecraft tradition, the king is to follow rules on vyavahāra provided by Brāhmaṇical scriptures, including the Vedas as well as Dharmasūtras of Āpastamba, Baudhāyana, and Gautama.
We can be confident of this interpretation of Gautama’s instructions because Gautama has clearly drawn much of his own discussion of rājadharma from the Arthaśāstra or a very similar text.Footnote 118 And his specification that kings use Brāhmaṇical scriptures makes sense only if it serves to exclude other kinds of texts that might also provide such rules. In all, I would argue that Gautama’s relative sophistication with respect to vyavahāra can be credited to his study of statecraft texts. What we can only infer in Āpastamba is directly perceptible in Gautama, as well as later dharma texts: their rules on vyavahāra depend in large part on statecraft sources.
The origins of the vyavahāra rules in Baudhāyana and the next Dharmasūtra chronologically, that of Vasiṣṭha, are not clear, but the Mānava Dharmaśāstra (“The Laws of Manu”; ca. second century CE), which inaugurates the “mature” phase of the dharmaśāstra tradition, borrows extensively from the Arthaśāstra.Footnote 119 So does the Yājñavālkya Dharmaśāstra (ca. fourth–fifth centuries CE).Footnote 120 Manu presents the first comprehensive vyavahāra code in a dharma text,Footnote 121 and he embeds it in a long tract on rājadharma that is mostly a digest of the Arthaśāstra. Although all dharma texts draw vyavahāra-type rules from earlier dharma texts, Manu gives further evidence of what we can now recognize as a pattern of dharma texts appropriating from the statecraft tradition with a particular interest in the rules of vyavahāra.
Unlike his predecessors, however, Manu's treatment of vyavahāra represents a significant advance over that of the Arthaśāstra.Footnote 122 Manu is the first to divide the rules for vyavahāra transactions into eighteen headings he calls vyavahārapadas (feet of vyavahāra). It is the first text where vyavahāra refers to a lawsuit (the Arthaśāstra calls these vivāda) and to the entire process of resolving a dispute in royal court. This latter meaning can only be implied in earlier sources.Footnote 123 These and other innovations tell us that the composer of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra was connected to the vyavahāra tradition in an intimate way. He must have been a jurist himself, whether he was recording historical developments or innovating on his own.
It is only beginning with Manu that we can observe the full coalescence of two worlds: that of the learned orthodox Brāhmaṇa and that of the state judge. After Manu, vyavahāra grows further in importance among dharma texts.Footnote 124 It makes up a third of the Yājñavalkya Dharmaśāstra and is the focus of the dharmaśāstras of Nārada, Bṛhaspati, and Kātyāyana (ca. fifth–seventh centuries CE). These later dharmaśāstra authors present further innovations to vyavahāra and bring it to its greatest articulation in the ancient period.Footnote 125 With Manu, vyavahāra fully becomes the property of dharmaśāstra, and dharmaśāstra seems to have begun the process of becoming a decidedly judicial tradition, at least among its most influential texts.
If we situate the development of vyavahāra in these dharma texts against the backdrop of the political tradition examined above, we can see that the earliest Dharmaśāstra texts do not represent the legal awakening of a group of orthodox priests motivated to ramify the requirements of sacred duty through the domain of state law. Instead, vyavahāra rules come into the early Dharmaśāstras as part of the integration of an adjunct discipline. Rājadharma (the sacred laws for kings) provides a theoretical framework for the absorption of teachings on statecraft, but there is no evidence that vyavahāra developed out of earlier reflection on the dharma of the king. What we are seeing is not an orthogenetic development, but an assimilative one. The result was the reinterpretation of vyavahāra as part of dharma and the obfuscation of its independent origin.
CONCLUSION: RELIGION AND LAW IN ANCIENT INDIA
I have presented the relationship between the statecraft tradition and dharmaśāstra in binary terms, but it should not be conceived as a one-way relationship between two hermetic bodies. We can imagine, on one hand, that ideas and people circulated between the two intellectual traditions in a number of ways, perhaps in ways that blurred their boundaries. Nevertheless, they seem to have maintained relatively distinct identities until the early centuries of the Common Era, when texts like the Mānava Dharmaśāstra indicate their more thoroughgoing coalescence. Nor should we imagine the vyavahāra tradition itself as homogeneous: it was almost certainly more well developed in some areas and may have taken forms quite different from those depicted in our sources. Once vyavahāra tracts were produced within dharmaśāstra, they too formed part of a greater legal tradition and served as paradigmatically authoritative sources for later jurists. The key question, reserved for future study, is why vyavahāra came to be of interest to Brāhmaṇas of the dharma tradition and what that tells us about the relationship between orthodox Brāhmaṇas and the law of state courts.
This study provides critical historical context to some of the normative complexity found in the dharmaśāstra literature. One conclusion that we can draw is that the conflict between the normative characteristics of vyavahāra and dharma is not merely apparent. The integration of vyavahāra into the normative context of dharma created real and enduring interpretive issues for dharmaśāstra as a legal tradition. Foremost among these is the legal authority of vyavahāra rules as found in dharma texts: do they possess sacred authority, temporal authority, or both? The disagreement and general difficulty found among the commentators tells us that no easy solution to the problem was forthcoming. Another legal artifact of vyavahāra’s appropriation was the need to reinterpret the “four feet” of law.Footnote 126 In the original formulation, each of these were understood as a rule set or type of rules, but the prioritization of vyavahāra over dharma there would have been unacceptable to later dharmaśāstra jurists and forced them to reinterpret the four feet as four means of resolving a court case. Special rules were applied to these four means so that dharma itself became the final determinate of the validity of all rules.Footnote 127 The awkward intellectual gymnastics of later dharma jurists give proof that the status of vyavahāra rules remained a problem for the tradition, which I take as further evidence of their independent origin.
The normative unity that pervades the dharmaśāstra corpus based on the prima facie identification of all of its rules as dharma should not obscure the fact that the Dharmaśāstras are deeply, messily plural texts. The early history of vyavahāra shows us this. These texts are aggregations of divergent rule sets, which fact justifies the potential historical utility of a formal analysis of dharmaśāstra based on its constituent normative elements, as attempted by DerrettFootnote 128 and Lingat,Footnote 129 among others. Perhaps we can venture more boldly to say that one cannot understand the history of dharmaśāstra without such formal analysis of its constituent rule sets. The history of vyavahāra helps us to see more clearly how dharmaśāstra operated in its own legal environment, not merely reflecting or recording that legal order, but actively engaging, transforming, and eliding parts of it. Beneath dharmaśāstra’s veneer of timelessness and unchangeability lie the decisive events and great personalities that shaped the legal order of ancient India.
Finally, this study refutes the orthogenetic model and any support that it may have rendered Maine's theory of law's disentanglement from religion or Weber's rationalization thesis. It has nothing to say, however, about the historical relationship between religion and law more generally, because I have not been able to take us back to the origins of vyavahāra itself. What is clear from a review of the earliest sources, however, is that vyavahāra appears to have its origin in everyday practices and the processes through which different people—and perhaps most importantly different kinds of people—reflected on the normative form of specific transactions and used those to resolve their disputes. By the time we get a view of these practices, kings are involved, and perhaps political authorities always were. At the same time, though, vyavahāra looks like something of an emergent, negotiated order. Certainly, no text claims that the rules of vyavahāra were legislated by states. Rather, political leaders were called upon (or betook themselves) to resolve disputes arising in their domains, and they codified the norms that they found in use. If this study tells us anything about the origin of law in South Asia, then, it cautions us first to be more specific (what kind of law?) and encourages us to reject a monocausal view of its emergence from some more fundamental social reality.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An early draft of this article was presented before the Everything Asia Research Group at Northwestern University, where I received valuable feedback on the general argument. A revised draft was also presented at a graduate-faculty colloquium of the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern, which helped me to put my findings in a larger context. I am grateful to Patrick Olivelle and two anonymous readers for the journal, all of whom provided valuable observations and critique
