Fictions in the Development of the Hindu Law Texts - Being the V. Krishnaswamy Aiyar Lectures 1925 Delivered Under the Auspices of the University of Madras

In determining the exact consequence of the employment of fictions in the development of foresic lore a study of the fictions in the Roman and English laws and the part played by them in the development of those laws is bound to throw cosiderable light upon the lines we are to pursue witin the province of the Hindu law. [...] Accordingly the Roman citizen of old and a Hindu of the Vedic age could not think of deviating a jot from the spirit of the Law of the Twelve Tables and the Vedas respectively but with the advance of political and social progress the archaic law of the Vedas came to be of little use in its practical application to an Indian of the Post-Vedic age as the Law of the Twelve Tables to the latter day R [...] This result was brought about in the King's Bench by allowing the plaintiff to falsely allege that the defendant was in the custody of the King's Marshal for a breach of the peace and when the defendant was thus brought within the jurisdiction of the court on a criminal charge he was thereafter prevented from disputing the genuineness of the allegation and the plaintiff was thus enabled to proc [...] But if he lived outside the county of Middlesex on the return of Non-est-inventus endorsed on the Bill of Middlesex by the sheriff the King's Bench issued a writ of latitat addressed to the sheriff of such other county within whose limits the defendant resided which recited the Bill of Middlesex and the return of the sheriff and the attestation to the court that the defendant lurks and runs abo [...] While the Prabhakara school restricts the denotation of the word to the act actually commanded by a Vedic Vidhi the Nyaya school of thinkers maintain that the word denotes the invisible effect named ApTirva which attaches to the soul on the performance of a religious act and endures until the attainment of the benefit contemplated by the act and the Bhatta school gives a. muk.' wider meaning t