3 Hindu Law

3.1 Concept and OriginHindu law is the law of the dharma tradition — not "law" in the modern state's sense but the divinely-ordered duty (dharma) of the person according to their station: a jurisprudence of righteousness where law, religion and custom braid. The origin: the Vedas (the revealed śruti — c. 1500–500 B.C.E.) as the ultimate authority; the Dharmasutras (the aphoristic manuals, c. 600– 300 B.C.E.); the Dharmashastras (the metrical treatises — above all the Manusmriti (Laws of Manu, c. 200 B.C.E.–200 C.E.): the classical system's fountainhead — the four-varna social order, the king as dharma's guardian, the eighteen vyavahara (legal procedure) titles; the later commentaries (the Nibandhas — Mitakshara, Dayabhaga) perfecting the regional schools; and the Smriti-chandrika-era science. The medieval-and-regional evolution: the scholarly schools (below); the custom's supremacy in practice (the village's living law); the Anglo-Hindu era (1772 onward — Warren Hastings's plan: the pandits advising the English judges on shastric law — the"Anglo-Hindu law" as the colonial construct: case-lawified dharma); the modern reform: the Hindu Code Acts of India (1955–56 — marriage, succession, minority, adoption, guardianship: the post- colonial reformation) and Nepal's own trajectory (the Ain's dharmashastra base → the 2020 Ain's reforms → the 2074 Code's uniformity: the Hindu-law substrate — coparcenary, stridhan, gotra- exogamy's shadows — absorbed into the general law; the Supreme Court's equality jurisprudence…