This intensively researched book argues that Hindu Law is an essentially flexible and constantly evolving system, that scholars have wrongly proclaimed it dead and merely a relic of an ancient past. The author contends that Hindu Law is very much alive and playing a role even in the current post-modern environment as is apparent in the way the courts themselves interpret various aspects of law, including the rules of inheritance, marriage, maintenance, and divorce. He also suggests that it would be wrong to see this law as uniformly oppressive. Wide in scope, the book examines the development of Hindu law from the ancient period, through it drastic remolding in the colonial era, to its emergence as a postmodern entity