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Mutilation of body parts is a remnant of the ancient Hindu punishment. It was used when an offender caused injuries to the victim. Mutilation was most typically seen as a punishment in cases of theft, robbery, and adultery as a way of making the criminal an example to the public because the mutilated body was a horrifying sight.
The classical texts of Hinduism devote numerous chapters to discussing what people who practice the virtue of ahimsa can and must do when faced with war, violent threat, or the need to sentence someone convicted of a crime. These discussions have led to theories of just war, ideas of reasonable self-defense, and views of proportionate punishment.
The texts viewed households and families as the archetype of community, "an exemplary institution of religious and legal reflection of Hindu jurisprudence". [3] Thus, Hindu jurisprudence portrayed the household, not the state, as the primary institution of law. [3] Connectedly, the household is the institution to which Hindu law is most applied.
Hinduism preaches ahimsa (or ahinsa, non-violence), [9] but also teaches that the soul cannot be killed and death is limited only to the physical body, [70] explaining the difficulty in choosing an exact position on capital punishment. [3] Hinduism's belief that life in this world is more of an illusion greatly decreases the religious impact on ...
Other scholars have expressed the same view, based on epigraphical, archaeological and textual evidence from medieval Hindu kingdoms in Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, while acknowledging that Manusmriti was influential to the South Asian history of law and was a theoretical resource.
Hindu law, as a historical term, refers to the code of laws applied to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs in British India. [1] [2] [3] Hindu law, in modern scholarship, also refers to the legal theory, jurisprudence and philosophical reflections on the nature of law discovered in ancient and medieval era Indian texts. [4]
Classical Hindu law is a category of Hindu law in traditional Hinduism, taken to begin with the transmittance of the Vedas [citation needed] and ending in 1772 with the adoption of "A Plan for the Administration of Justice in Bengal" by the Bengal government.
The Manusmriti (~ 2nd to 3rd century CE) [55] [56] is the most studied and earliest metrical work of the Dharmaśāstra textual tradition of Hinduism. [57] [58] The medieval era Buddhistic law of Myanmar and Thailand are also ascribed to Manu, [59] [60] and the text influenced past Hindu kingdoms in Cambodia and Indonesia. [61]