Dharmashastra : Einführung und Überblick

9. Erbrecht

4. Varia

von Alois Payer

mailto: payer@payer.de

Zitierweise / cite as:

Payer, Alois <1944 - >: Dharmashastra : Einführung und Überblick. -- 9. Erbrecht. -- 4. Varia. -- Fassung vom 2004-03-08. -- URL: http://www.payer.de/dharmashastra/dharmash094.htm -- [Stichwort].

Erstmals publiziert: 2004-02-04

Überarbeitungen: 2004-03-08 [Ergänzungen]

Anlass: Lehrveranstaltung 2003/04

Unterrichtsmaterialien (gemäß § 46 (1) UrhG)

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Dieser Teil ist ein Kapitel von:

Payer, Alois <1944 - >: Dharmashastra : Einführung und Übersicht. -- http://www.payer.de/dharmashastra/dharmash00.htm

Dieser Text ist Teil der Abteilung Sanskrit von Tüpfli's Global Village Library

0. Übersicht

8. Der Inhalt des Dâyabhâga

Inhaltsverzeichnis von Jîmûtavâhana's Dâyabhâga nach Colebrookes offiziöser Übersetzung:

  1. Partition of heritage defined and explained. Two periods of partition of the Father's wealth
  2. Partition, made by a father, of property ancestral, and of his o\vh acquisitions
  3. Partition by brothers
    1. Partition improper in the mother's lifetime. Management of the affairs during the continuance of the family partnership. Any  one co-parcener may insist on separation. Right by representation admitted as far as the third degree
    2. Partition with or without specific deductions. Provision for the mother, and for the sister
  4. IV. Succession to woman's property
    1. Separate property of a woman defined and explained
    2. Sect. II. Succession of a woman's children to her separate property
    3. Sect. III. Succession to the separate property of a childless woman
  5. Exclusion from inheritance
  6.  Effects liable or not liable to partition
    1. Patrimony and joint stock, divisible ; separate acquisitions, not to be divided
    2. Definitions of the various sorts of acquisitions, &c., exempt from partition
  7. Participation of sons born after a partition
  8. Allotment of a share to a co-parcener returnin from abroad
  9. Participation of sons of women by  various tribes
  10. Participation of sons by adoption
  11. Succession to the estate of one who leaves no male issue
    1. Widow's right of succession
    2. On the right of the daughter and daughter's son
    3. On the father's right of succession
    4. On the mother's right of succession
    5. On the brother's right of succession
    6. On the nephew's right of succession, and that of other heirs
  12. Second partition of property after the re-union of co-parceners
  13. Distribution of effects concealed
  14. Ascertainment of a contested partition
  15. Peroration

9. Die Wirklichkeit im dörflichen Indien heute: wirtschaftliche Stellung der Witwen

Dr. Marty Chen, Harvard Institute of Development Studies,. Cambridge Mass.,  schreibt dazu:

"Inheritance

Local interpretations of the custom of the caste determine whether or not a widow will be granted some permanent or temporary share of the joint family's land or property.

In rural India, land ownership tends to engender the bitterest family disputes - never more intense than when a husband dies. A full account of land inheritance in India would have to distinguish between

  1. traditional law
  2. modern law, and
  3. actual practice.

The inheritance rights of the majority of Indian rural widows are governed by actual practice. Practice can differ from village to village, even in the same region and among the same caste.

If a widow has adult sons, she may enjoy - but not always - some measure of security, and on her husband's death she may remain in the house, and share the household income. But if she is childless or has only daughters, she usually faces problems.

Indian women, especially in the north, are not so likely to work in agriculture as those are in Africa. The gender division of labour is greater in a "plough" culture, rather than a "hoe" one. So even if a widow is left with land, she is unable to cultivate it without male management.

Although the Hindu Succession Act 1969 made women eligible to inherit equally with men and some individual states have legislated equality provisions into inheritance law widows are mostly deprived of their legal rights.

Patrilocal residence and patrilineal inheritance ( the wife goes to live in her husband's village; only males can inherit) is a fundamental source of the poverty and marginalisation of Indian widows. An Indian wife becomes the property of her in-laws family, and when her husband dies they can decide what to give her and how to treat her. Having broken all intimate ties with her birth family, when her husband dies a widow has no freedom to "return" to the parental home, or to her brothers. She remains in her husband's village whether or not her owned land or property.

If there is land, under most caste codes the widow should be allotted some for her needs, but she is not given ownership rights; she cannot mortgage, sell or gift it away. She only has the "use" and very limited rights. If she marries away "going for nata", has no children, is judged to behave badly, she may be sent away.

The reality is that limited as they are, the accepted property rights of widows are often violated in practice. In a Chen study in 1994, 30% of the widows in a study reported serious conflicts over inheritance, land, property, residence. Conflicts often ended in violence.

Conflicts over land and property are often so bad that brothers-in-law force the widow to leave the village. Conflicts are usually of two types: the brothers-in-law insist on sharecropping or managing the widow's land themselves, or they simply deprive her of her share (often rationalising their claim by arguing that they spent money on her husband's funeral or on her children's maintenance; they might even bring up the dowry question and say that money was owed). Even if she owns land, she may have no access to wells, ploughs and bullocks.

In their attempts to gain control of land and property, the brothers-in-law may (often abetted by their wives) harass, persecute, beat and torture and even arrange the murder of the widow.

To exercise full ownership rights by inheritance a widow would have to be literate, courageous, and mobile. She would need to be able to assert her claim dealing with (male) officials at Land Registries and with lawyers. For a rural widow this is impossible. Her status as a widow prohibits her from leaving the house; she cannot afford to travel to the nearest town; she is ignorant of the rules and she cannot fill up a form or sign her name. She is completely unequipped to deal with the bureaucracy, confront male strangers, and in seeking outside assistance she lays herself open to more gossip, verbal abuse and violence.

A recent study (1998) of 562 widows in India showed that 70% of them had not managed to obtain inheritance rights acknowledged to exist under customary law. (Chen 1999)

Rampunit Devi,from Bihar, was only 12 when her husband died. Married at six she had only lived with her husband one year before he died. Her brothers-in-law wanted to get rid of her because they wanted to take the share of land that was hers by right. They beat her and poured boiling water mixed with chillies on her. They were about to cut her throat when neighbours, hearing her screams, rescued her. She spent nine months in hospital. She never went back and the brothers were never arrested or punished. She found shelter with a local Christian NGO who had visited her in hospital. She now works for them, but she is scarred for life and is unlikely to marry.(Testimony given at the Bangalore conference 1994) "

[Quelle: http://www.oneworld.org/empoweringwidows/10countries/india.html. -- Zugriff am 2003-12-29]

 
SikhSpectrum.com Monthly                                                                     Issue No.8, January 2003

Women In White: India's Widows

by Hutokshi Doctor [A senior journalist who has worked in the Indian media for over 20 years, she has been assistant editor of The Times of India, Mumbai, features editor of The Independent and editor of Humanscape, a journal on social change and social action. She has also held senior editorial positions at Midday, The Illustrated Weekly of India, Debonair and Imprint. ]

Copyright ©Hutokshi Doctor

Read the following three paragraphs carefully. Then answer the questions that follow:

  1. Janaki was a young inmate of a widows' home in Benaras. The home was run by a widow who supplied the younger inmates to zamindars and seths. Janaki was one of the widows forced into prostitution. Chuhiya was the youngest widow at the ashram. All of eight. The madam offered Chuhiya for gangrape. Chuhiya survived the rape, but only just. Janaki managed to make her way out of the ashram. But even outside it, she came to grief. She killed herself.
  2. Bina was six when she was married off to a man who was 32. Her brother sold her to the bridegroom for Rs 300. For three years her husband beat her, locking her out of the house for days at a stretch. Then one day he died. At nine, Bina was a widow.

    Her brother-in-law and sister-in-law then began abusing her, beating her. They wanted to drive her out of the house: she was unlucky, they said. When she grew up, she would demand her share of the property. Finally, when she was in her late teens, her sister rescued her and took her to an ashram in a nearby town.

  3. A funeral procession was about to leave for the cremation grounds. The widow sat cringing in a corner. No one would touch her. Three women from the barber caste were summoned. They pounced on her and tore her ornaments off. In the procession, she had to follow 200 feet behind the rest, lest her shadow fall on a married woman and she be widowed too. No one approached her all day -- even to give her water.

    For 13 days after the cremation she was made to sit on the ground in the same clothes. On the 13th day she was allowed to bathe and change. The barber women came and shaved her hair off. The brahmin came to collect his dues. Then she was sent off to the Ganga on pilgrimage. Who knows if she ever came back…

Which of these stories is fact, and which fiction?

Which of these stories is set in the 19th century, which in pre-independence India, and which in contemporary India?

Give yourself 10 points for each correct answer: The first is the bare bones of the plot of Water, Deepa Mehta's controversial film set in 1930s Benaras, now abandoned, following a storm of protest last year.

The second is the real-life story of a girl who lived in a village 22 kms from the town of Madhubani in Bihar. Bina is now around 30. She lives in the Abhay Ashram in Madhubani, is literate, and manages a handicrafts emporium in the town. She earns Rs 550. "My life was played with as though it were a doll's," she said recently. "But we will make progress. We will show the kind of revolution that widows are capable of if harassed."

The third is as real as it can get too. It is based on an article by an anonymous writer titled `The Plight of Hindu Widows as Described by a Widow Herself' published in April 1889.

Only the first story, therefore, is fiction. But even that, a West Bengal government-sponsored study released recently reveals, reflects the facts. Widows from West Bengal, the northeastern states and Bangladesh still make their way to the ashrams of Vrindavan, Mathura and Varanasi, in the hope that in the holy cities, god will not allow anyone to starve.

Young widows are still being brought in by sex traffickers and sold into prostitution. The sevadasi system, in which the 'service' done to rich and powerful pilgrims is seen as an act of piety, is still prevalent. Sexual exploitation still exists at the bhajanashrams.

In September 2001, a high-level meeting of the National Human Rights Commission, representatives of the Department of Women and Child Development, Human Resource Development Ministry, and Governments of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal was held. At this meeting, Justice JS Verma said:

It is unfortunate that nothing substantial seems to have happened to elevate the status of women who hence come to Vrindavan despite the philanthropic attitude of the people in the country to help others. The need of the hour is to take concrete steps to stop the flow of women to Vrindavan and simultaneously carry out rehabilitation programmes whereby the overall plight of these women can be improved.

The NHRC, it was decided, would be the facilitating agency that would take these concrete steps, coordinating efforts of the government and NGOs. Justice Sujata V Manohar, NHRC member who visited Vrindavan to study the plight of widows, stated that facilities such as free and clean accommodation, financial assistance and proper healthcare should be provided to these destitute women. She suggested that a fund be set up for their dignified cremation, distribution of pension, establishment of self-help groups for income-generation, provision of LPG connections for group cooking, ration cards, group housing scheme and suitable security measures.

Whether these "concrete steps" will make any difference at all to the widows of Vrindavan remains to be seen.

An earlier study, commissioned in 1992 by the National Commission for Women and conducted by Deepali Bhanot, corroborates that "the flesh trade flourishes in Vrindavan and Mathura in the full knowledge of the police, administration, holy men and politicians." Amongst the several widows interviewed, Chapla Desi, 27, is quoted as saying,

All men lust after our bodies.

Baldly stated, but essentially what the Adi Parva of the Mahabharata recorded centuries ago: "Just as birds flock to a piece of flesh left on the ground, so all men try to seduce a woman whose husband is dead."

Of the 2,910 women surveyed in the West Bengal study, 2,113 were from West Bengal, 297 from Bangladesh. Over 500 were below 30. Fifty per cent of them depend on the doles at the bhajanashrams and on begging. There is no other way to make a living. No wonder they turn to prostitution. The NCW study stated that women are paid Rs 2 plus 250 grams of rice and 50 grams of dal for singing bhajans eight hours a day. Scams in various institutions ensure that sometimes they don't get even that.

With rents skyrocketing from Rs 3 to Rs 350 per month, most widows outside the ashrams now live 30-40 to one squalid tenement. A few jute sacks constitute their bedding. Diseases such as tuberculosis, dysentery and STDs are common, but medical help is virtually non-existent. From their meagre earnings the widows must save to take care of their own last rites.

In spite of this miserable existence, only 436 widows of the 2,910 would go home given the chance. This is perhaps the saddest part of their story. For in these temple towns at least the widow is free to live her own life with others like herself. Back home it is her own family that does her out of her property, obliterates her identity and ordains for her a kind of social death.

The problems of the destitutes in temple towns is only one visible end of the white sari. According to the 1991 Census there are 33 million widows all over India -- 8 per cent of the total female population and 50 per cent of the female population over the age of 50. In terms of prevalence of widowhood, India ranks among the highest in the world.

The incidence of widowhood rises sharply with age: 64 per cent among women aged 60 and above, and 80 per cent among women aged 70. An Indian woman who survives to old age is therefore almost certain to become a widow. In contrast, only 2.5 per cent of Indian men are widowers, and even in the older age groups only a small minority of men are widowed. The main reasons for this are the much higher rate of remarriage for widowers, and the fact that male mortality rates are higher than female.

The story of the daily deprivations of these 33 million widows is never told. Deprivations that cause mortality rates for widows to be a shocking 85 per cent higher amongst widows than among married women.

Apart from the economic problems, widows even in educated, middle class families continue to be placed under immense psychological and social pressures. Martha Alter Chen's extensive survey of widows across seven states reveals that even today widows are accused of being 'responsible' for their husband's death. They are pressurised to observe restrictive codes of dress and behaviour. They are excluded from religious and social life. They are physically and sexually abused. And they are done out of their property.

In theory, 51 per cent of widows have rights to a share in their husband's land. But these rights are often violated in practice by brothers-in-law. It is ominous that in the Jharkhand region of Bihar, of the 46 Santhal women persecuted and killed as 'witches' in recent years, 42 were widows with land rights.

What isn't entirely accurate is the popular conception that widow remarriage is prohibited in Hindu society. Only the upper castes prohibit the practice. In most other cases, widows are allowed to remarry -- including levirate marriages to their brothers-in-law -- but often don't choose to, either because of their children, or because a man agreeing to marry a widow is generally impoverished, looking for a second wife, or old.

Also, most widows today are not forced to undergo the rituals that marked the renunciation of a woman's sexuality amongst the Brahmanical upper castes. The Brahmanical tradition especially after 700 AD saw women as:

"sites of conflict between a demoniac stri-svabhava -- their innate nature, which is lustful -- and their stridharma, a woman's duty. There (was considered) no greater delight and no more destructive urge for women than sex," writes Uma Chakravarti in Widows in India: Social Neglect and Public Action (Sage, 1999), edited by Martha Alter Chen.

Early marriage was the only way to channelise her lustful sexual energies.

Through marriage and wifely devotion, the biological woman - a wild, untamed and disorderly entity -- can be converted into a 'cultured' woman, a social entity who has vanquished all the demoniac force within her.

With her husband dead, a widow's riotous passion is the cause of moral panic. She must therefore be completely neutered, desexed. The Laws of Manu laid down that she must give up ornamentation, observe fasts, emaciate the body, eat only one meal a day, and sleep on the floor. She must not eat 'hot' foods or betelnut which heats up the body. The orange haldi applied on her before marriage to heat it up for intercourse and the bloodred kumkum and sindoor that marked her out as a sexually potent female were to be substituted by the ash of the funeral pyre.

Widows in India may no longer be required to shave their hair off. But the mindset that sees a woman's identity only vis-à-vis the males around her has not really changed. As Meera Kumar, a women's activist who has written extensively on the subject of widowhood says, "The traditional Hindu blessing for a married woman is Sadaa Sowbhagyawati Bhavaa, thereby implying that marriage is the only desirable state for a woman." No wonder the widow is marginalised and reduced to a social non-entity.

On the one hand society reveres the mother as a demi-goddess. But she cannot be a goddess unless she sports sindoor and bangles. There is an absolute dichotomy in the attitudes to the woman as pativrata and as widow.

[Quelle: http://www.sikhspectrum.com/012003/widows_h.htm. -- Zugriff am 2003-12-29]

10. Weiterführende Ressourcen

Abb.: Einbandtitel

Mayne's treatise on Hindu law & usage : also containing commentaries on the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, the Hindu Minority & Guardianship Act, 1956, the Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act, 1937 / John Dawson Mayne  [1828-1917].  -- 15th ed. / revised by Ranganath Misra [1926 - ]. -- New Delhi : Bharat Law House, ©2003. -- 139, 1507 S. -- ISBN 8177370677. -- [Standardwerk]

Vorwort zur ersten Auflage, 1878:

"Preface to the First Edition

I have endeavoured in this work to show, not only what the Hindu Law is, but how it came to be what it is. Probably many of my professional readers may think that the latter part of the enquiry is only a waste of time and trouble, and that, in pursuing it, I have added to the bulk of the volume without increasing its utility. It might be sufficient to say that I have aimed at writing a book, which should be something different from a mere practitioner's manual.

Hindu Law has the oldest pedigree of any known system of jurisprudence, and even now it shows no signs of decrepitude. At this day it governs races of men, extending from Cashmere to Cape Comorin, who agree in nothing else except their submission to it. No time or trouble can be wasted, which is spent in investigating the origin and development of such a system, and the causes of its influence. I cannot but indulge a hope that the very parts of this work, which seem of least value to a practising lawyer, may be read with interest by some who never intend to enter a court. I also hope that the same discussions, which appear to have only an antiquarian and theoretical interest, may be found of real service, if not to the counsel who has to win a case, at all events to the judge who has to decide it.

The great difficulty which meets a judge is to choose between the conflicting texts which can be presented to him on almost every questions. This difficulty is constantly increased by the labours of those scholars who are yearly opening up fresh sources of information. The works which they have made accessible, are, naturally, the works of the very early writers, who had passed into oblivion, because the substance of their teaching was embodied in more modern treatises. Many of these early texts are in conflict with each other, and still more are in conflict with the general body of law as it has been administered in our courts.

An opinion seems to be growing up that we have been going all wrong; that we have been mistaken in taking the law from its more recent interpreters, and that our only safe course is to revert to antiquity, and, wherever it may be necessary, to correct the Mitakshara or the Dayabhaga by Manu, Gautama or Vasishtha. Such a view omits to notice that some of these authors are perhaps two thousand years old, and that even the East does change, though slowly. The real task of the lawyer is not to reconcile these contradictions, which is impossible, but to account for them. He will best help a judge who is pressed, for instance, by a text which forbids a partition, or which makes a father the absolute despot of his family, by showing him that these texts were once literally true, but that the state of society, in which they were true, has long since passed away. This has been done to a considerable extent by Dr. Mayr in his most valuable work, Das Indische Erbrecht1. He seems, however, not to have been acquainted with the writers of the Bengal school, and of course had no knowledge of the developments which the law has received through nearly a century of judicial decisions. I have tried to follow in the course marked out by him, and by Sir H.S. Maine2 in his well-known writings. It would be presumption to hope that I have done so with complete, or even with any considerable success. But I hope the attempt may lead the way to criticism, which will end in the discovery of truth.

Another, and completely different current of opinion, is that of those who think that Hindu Law, as represented in the Sanskrit writings, has little application to any but Brahmans, or those who accept the ministrations of Brahmans, and that it has no bearing upon the life of the inferior castes, and of the non-Aryan races. This view has been put forward by Mr. Nelson in his "View of the Hindu Law as administered by the Madras High Court."3 In much that he says I thoroughly agree with him. I quite agree with him in thinking that rules, founded on the religious doctrines of Brahmanism, cannot be properly applied to tribes who have never received those doctrines, merely upon evidence that they are contained in a Sanskrit law book. But it seems to me that the influence of Brahmanism upon even the Sanskrit writers has been greatly exaggerated, and mainly based upon usage which, in substance, though not in detail, is common both to Aryan and non-Aryan tribes. Much of the present work is devoted to the elucidation of this view. I also think that he has under-estimated the influence which the Sanskrit law has exercised, in moulding to its own model the somewhat similar usages even of non-Aryan races. This influence has been exercised throughout the whole of Southern India during the present century by means of our courts and Pandits, by Vakils, and Officials, both judicial and revenue, almost all of whom, till very lately, were Brahmans.

That the Dravidian races have any conscious belief that they are following the Mitakshara, I do not at all suppose. Nor has an Englishman any conscious belief that his life is guided by Lord Coke4 and Lord Mansfield5. But it is quite possible that these races may be trying unconsciously to follow the course of life which is adopted by the most respectable, the most intellectual, and the best educated among their neighbours. The result would be exactly the same as if they studied the Mitakshara for themselves. That this really is the case of an opinion which I arrived at, after fifteen years acquaintance with the litigation of every part of the Madras Presidency. Even in Malabar I have witnessed continued efforts on the part of the natives to cast off their own customs and to deal with their property by partition, alienation, and devise, as if it were governed by the ordinary Hindu Law. These efforts were constantly successful in the provincial Courts, but were invariably foiled on appeal to the Sudder Courts at Madras, the objection being frequently taken for the first time by an English Barrister. It so happened that, during the whole time of this silent revolt, the Sudder Court possessed one or more judges, who were thoroughly acquainted with Malabar customs, and by whom cases from that district were invariably heard. Had the Court been without such special experience, the process would probably have gone on with such rapidity that, by this time, every Malabar tarwad would have been broken up. The revolt would have been a revolution.

A third class of opinion is that of the common-sense Englishman, whose views are very ably represented by Mr. Cunningham—now Judge of the Bengal High Court—in the preface to his recent "Digest of Hindu Law"6. He appears to look upon the entire law with a mixture of wonder and pity. He is amused at the absurdity of the rule which forbids an orphan to be adopted. He is shocked at finding that a man's great-grandson is his immediate heir, while the son of that great-grandson is a very remote heir, and his own sister is hardly an heir at all. He thinks everything would be set right by a short and simple code, which would please everybody, and upon the meaning of which the judges are not expected to differ. These of course are questions for the legislator, not for the lawyer. I have attempted to offer materials for the discussion by showing how the rules in question originated, and how much would have to be removed if they were altered. The age of miracles has passed, and I hardly expect to see a Code of Hindu Law which shall satisfy the trader and the agriculturist, the Punjabi and the Bengali, the pundits of Benares and Ramaiswaram, of Amritsar and of Poona. But I can easily imagine a very beautiful and specious code, which should produce much more dissatisfaction and expense than the law as at present administered.

I cannot conclude without expressing my painful consciousness of the disadvantage under which I have laboured from my ignorance of Sanskrit. This has made me completely dependent on translated works. A really satisfactory treatise on Hindu Law would require its author to be equally learned as a lawyer and an Orientalist. Such a work could have been produced by Mr. Colebrooke, or by the editors of the Bombay Digest, if the Government had not restricted the scope of their labours. Hitherto, unfortunately, those who have possessed the necessary qualifications have wanted either the inclination or the time. The lawyers have not been Orientalists, and the Orientalists have not been lawyers. For the correction of the many mistakes into which my ignorance has led me, I can only most cordially say: Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.

Inner Temple
July, 1878

JOHN D. MAYNE"

[1 Mayr, A.: Das indische Erbrecht. -- Wien, 1873

2 Maine, Henry Sumner <1822-1888>. Ancient law : its connection with the early history of society, and its relation to modern ideas. By Henry Sumner Maine ... with an introduction by Theodore W. Dwight... -- 1st American from 2d London ed.  -- New York : Scribner, 1864.  -- 400 S.

3

4 Coke, Sir Edward (1552-1634): Verfasser von Institutes of the laws of England (1628-44)

5 Mansfield, Lord, William Murray (1705-93), seit 1756 Chief Justice on the King's Bench

6  Cunningham, H. S. (Henry Stewart) <1832 - >: A digest of Hindu law : as administered in the courts of the Madras presidency / arranged and annotated by H.S. Cunningham. -- Madras : Higginbotham, 1877. -- 212 S.]


Abb.: Ranganath Misra <1926 - > [Bildquelle: http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/judges/bio/rmisra.htm. -- Zugriff am 2003-12-31]

Principles of Hindu law / Mulla [, Dinshah Fardunji <1868-1934>]  ; Satyajeet A. Desai. -- 18th ed. -- New Delhi : Butterworths India, ©2001. --  2 Bde. : 999, 622 S. -- ISBN 8187162651. -- [Standardwerk]

Gandhi, B. M. (Bhanuprasad Manilal) <1927 - >: Hindu law. -- 2nd ed. -- Lucknow : Eastern Book Co., ©2003. -- lvi, 424 S. -- ISBN 8170127688. -- [Gut verständliche Einführung]

Two treatises on the Hindu law of inheritance / transl. by H. T. Colebrooke. - Calcutta : Hindustanee Pr., 1810. - XV, 377 S. --
Enthält: A treatise on inheritance / by Jimutavahana [Originaltitel:. Dâyabhâga]. The law of inheritance from the Mitácshará / Vijñanesvara Bhattaraka [Originaltitel: Mitâksarâ ]

Jîmûtavâhana: Jîmûtavâhana's Dâyabhâga : the Hindu law of inheritance in Bengal / edited and translated with an introduction and notes by Ludo Rocher. -- Oxford [u.a] : Oxford University Press, ©2002. -- XII, 426 S. -- (South Asia research) -- ISBN 0195138171

Setlur, S. Shrinivasiyengar: A complete collection of Hindu law books on inheritance. -- Madras :  V. Kalyanaram Iyer, 1911. -- 449, 578 S.
Enthält Übersetzungen aus folgenden Werken:

Wichtige Quellen für das case law:

[Vorhandene Bestände in Deutschland siehe: Zeitschriftendatenbank. -- http://pacifix.ddb.de:7000/DB=1.1/SRT=YOP/. -- Zugriff am 2004-01-11. -- Die Reihen sind u.a. vorhanden im Südasien-Institut Heidelberg (Webpräsenz: http://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/. -- Zugriff am 2004-01-11); In der Schweiz sind die Indian law reports in öffentlichen Bibliotheken nicht vorhanden, The All-India Reporter erst ab Jahrgang 1970 im Institut suisse de droit comparé ISDC = Schweizerisches Institut für Rechtsvergleichung, Lausanne. -- Webpräsenz: http://isdc.ch. -- Zugriff am 2004-01-11]

The Indian law reports. - Allahabad [u.a.]  [offizieller Status durch Indian Law Reports Act,1875] [Neuere Reports teilweise kostenfrei im Internet]

Wichtigste Unterreihen:

Beispiel eines Zitats: Authikesavalu v Ramanuja (1909) 32 Mad 512  [= Indian law reports, Madras series Bd. 32 (1909), S. 512]

The All-India reporter : AIR ; cont. full reports of all reportabel judgments of ... -- Nagpur : All India Reporter   1.1914 - . -- [Neuere Ausgaben auch online, kostenpflichtig: http://www.allindiareporter.com/. -- Zugriff am 2004-01-06]

JUDIS - The Judgement Information System.  -- http://www.judis.nic.in/. -- Zugriff am 2004-01-11
Dort sind online recherchierbar und kostenfrei zugänglich die Entscheide:

Zu Kapitel 10,1: Sakramente und Übergangsriten (samskara): Allgemeines