Responsa in Hindu Law: Consultation and Lawmaking in Medieval India

Abstract

The practice of legal consultation, especially petitions for legal opinions or responsa, has never been seriously investigated or even noticed in the Hindu law tradition. Practices of legal inquiry and response are well known in other legal traditions—for example, ius respondendi in Roman law, she’elot u-teshuvot in Jewish law, futyā in Islamic law, and consilia sapientis in Canon law. Following the expectations set up by such comparisons, I argue that legal consultation and responsa also formed a critical part of the institutional practice of Hindu law in classical and medieval India. The evidence for legal consultation in Hindu law includes direct and indirect historical records of responsa, depictions of legal inquiry and response in narrative texts, and key passages in the religio-legal texts called Dharmaśāstra. By incorporating legal consultation into an account of the development of law and religion in India, we can describe Hindu law in history in a way that better accounts both for the identification of this tradition as Hindu and for important, but poorly understood, legal practices that have usually been dismissed as mere custom.