The pursuit of artha

Yajnavalkya, Narada, Vishnu, Brihaspati, Katyayana represent the latter (something like 2nd to 7th century CE). Then there are later commentaries (bhashya) and digests (nibandha) spanning the 6th to 17th centuries CE.

Donald Davis has written on Hindu law earlier, therefore he knows the ins and outs of the texts. Depending on what you count, the number of texts can range between 20 and 100. In addition to sutras, smritis, bhashyas and nibandhas, the author includes the Arthashastra. These texts cover a wide variety of topics — sadachara (good behaviour), prayashchitta (atonement) and vyavahara. The latter means commerce, administration of justice and customary laws.

The blurb on the back of the book states, “This exciting book provides a new perspective of commercial law during this period.” The five chapters in this slim volume are titled, “How to Read a Dharmashastra”, “Business Law in Context”, “Relationships as the Foundation of Commerce”, “Why Government is Necessary for Business” and “Virtue in Business”. Of these, the most interesting is the first chapter. As Mr Davis explains, “What were these Brahmin men (and, with very few exceptions, they were all Brahmin men) trying to do? .... The first topics had to do with the family and household, the rules and rituals that governed the daily and cyclical lives of ordinary Brahmins…. From the legal and religious perspective, therefore, business, like all social institutions, had to follow specific rules and work within certain categories in order to qualify as dharma. To be precise, procedural and substantive law (vyavahara) fell under the dharma of the king (rajadharma) and eight of the eighteen headings or titles of substantive law deal with business or commerce…. Following Manu, the eight are: (1) non-payment of Debts, (2) Deposits, (3) Sale without Ownership, (4) Partnerships, (5) Non-payment of Wages, (6) Breach of Sale or Purchase, (7) Violation of Business Standards, and (8) Disputes between Employers and Employees… The eight business-related titles of law will form the backbone of evidence to be used in this book.”

The perspective is “new” in the sense that, even in India, one often approaches business with a Western and corporate lens. Having said that, those excerpts from the first chapter illustrate a problem with this book. Mr Davis has constrained himself by presuming a book on commercial law will have to be restricted to those eight of the 18 headings. Vyavahara is a sub-set of dharma; one can’t look at it in isolation from broader aspects of dharma. Commercial law is a sub-set of vyavahara; one can’t look at commercial law in isolation from broader aspects of vyavahara. Even if this wasn’t going to be a book on dharma, I don’t see why it couldn’t have been a book on vyavahara. That would have meant an inclusion of the 10 topics, from the traditional list of 18 excluded. Examples are inheritance laws, marriage laws, theft, gambling, defamation, assault, adultery/rape and robbery/murder. That would have made for a thicker and richer book.

As it stands, the promise of the first chapter peters out a bit in the subsequent four. But indeed, those eight topics are presented within a structure and will be useful to those who don’t know what the dharmashastra texts say.

There is an interesting point the author makes. “In my view, the first thing to remember is that dharmashastra, much like other legal systems from Jewish law to Islamic law to Roman law, was a scholars’ law or a jurists’ law. When you approach a dharmashastra text, you can’t have lawyers and legislators in mind to start with, much less [that of] business people. Instead, you should think of law school professors.” As such, they weren’t necessarily prescriptive, or even descriptive. For example, even though not stated explicitly, this seems to be obvious in the first few verses of the much-maligned “Laws of Manu”.

There is a deeper point that takes us beyond this book. The composers were “Brahmin men” concerned with “the daily and cyclical lives of ordinary Brahmins”. According to Manu (10.75), a Brahmana was allowed six kinds of acts – teaching, studying, performing sacrifices for himself, performing sacrifices for others, giving donations and receiving donations. This is repeated in many other texts too. The traditional objectives of human existence were dharma, artha, kama and moksha. The Brahmana’s acts did nothing to create artha. Brahmanas survived on wealth created by others. Therefore, if one seeks to understand commerce and pursuit of artha, one can’t depend solely on texts authored by Brahmanas and for Brahmanas.

This is not meant to belittle the importance of this book. Within its narrow construct, it is a very well-written one. Difficult though it may be (because most texts were composed by Brahmanas), one needs parallel books to understand the subject at hand. Commercial Law in Medieval India Donald R Davis Portfolio/Penguin 155 pages; ~299