1. INTRODUCTION
The interplay between people's law and state law has ancient roots in India, especially in the growth of classical Hindu law. The classical sources of the Hindu law display the dynamic relation of “custom” to the eternal law of dharma as well as the secular law of the Prince.
Those sources include: Dharmasutras (compiled between about 800 and 500/400 B.C.), Dharmaśāstras (circa A.D. 200), commentaries and digests (which appeared as early as A.D. 600). Indeed, the śāstras themselves embody numerous customs. Carita is specifically recognized as a source of law, though only when it is qualified as sadācāra or sístācāra, that is “good custom” or “usages of the good”. The śāstra, of course, did not incorporate all major customs. Thus, the śāstra tells us little or nothing about the customs of mechas, forest or hill tribes or other untouchables living on the fringe of Hindu society; the jurisprudence did not grow to include them” (Derrett, 1968: 177). Nor do the śāstras make much effort to “record or standardize commercial customs, though examples of general commercial usage are to be found” (id.: 159). Customs relating to “land tenure, to tenancies and the like are given little space"; so also customs “relating to marriage were incorporated to a limited degree” (id.: 159–160). Perhaps, since proof of custom overrode the written law, the “jurist's” task was to perfect the latter and not to expatiate on customary deviations” (id.: 161).But certain basic questions remain: How is one to distinguish (prior to the advent of the Western conception of law and authority) between dharma and law? between dharma, law, custom, and royal power? What kinds of relationships exist among these? What are the relationships between the law-in-books and the law-in-action? What are the distinctive features of the Hindu jurisprudence? These and related questions have no doubt preoccupied eminent scholars in the field, but the late lamented Robert Lingat offers in his Classical Law of India (1973), probably for the first time, a systematic array of answers to them. Whether or not all the answers are acceptable, subsequent work in the area will have to take them as starting points for thought.