''Vyavahāramālā'' is a treatise in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
on
jurisprudence
Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values ...
and legal practices composed by an unknown scholar from Kerala sometime during the 16th-17th centuries CE. This was the standard reference for legal practices in the kingly courts of the erstwhile kingdoms of Travancore and Cochin till the adoption of modern legal practices under the supervision and guidance of
John Munro (1778 – 1858) who had served as Resident and Diwan of the States of Travancore and Cochin between 1810 and 1819.
[ However, Munro's reforms did not make ''Vyavahāramālā'' completely obsolete. Munro used it to develop an Anglo-Indian code of law for the Travancore kingdom called ''Caṭṭavariyōla'' and established a hierarchy of courts and the rules for presenting cases in those courts.][ Based on the
selection and organization of the verses collected in the ''Vyavahāramālā'' one could see that is a it is a collection of verses on law and legal
procedure based on the ''Vyavahāranirṇaya'' of Varadaraja.][ It is a work consisting of 1234 verses and the main part is divided into 19 chapters called ''prakaraṇa''-s. Before starting the ''prakaraṇa''-s, the author has dealt with some general requirements of legal procedures like qualities of the judge, the layout of the court, etc. The first eleven ''prakaraṇa''-s deal with civil laws, the next five ''prakaraṇa''-s deal with criminal laws, the seventeenth ''prakaraṇa'' discusses laws relating to partition of property, the eighteenth one deals with some further aspects of criminal laws and the final ''prakaraṇa'' is devoted miscellaneous topics not touched upon in the previous chapters.]
Authorship
Ulloor S. Paramesvara Aiyer in his multi-volume "''Kerala Sahithya Charithram''" ("''History of Literature in Kerala''") claimed that Mazhamaṅgalaṃ Nārāyaṇan Naṃpūtiri
Mazhamaṅgalaṃ Nārāyaṇan Naṃpūtiri (Nārāyaṇa of Mahiṣamaṅgalṃ) (c. 1540–1610) was an Indian scholar, poet, astrologer and mathematician belonging to the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. Nārāyaṇan Naṃpūtiri h ...
(c. 1540–1610) who hailed from Kerala, India was the author of ''Vyavahāramāla''.[ (pages 293–301)]
But curiously, in a Malyalam translation of ''Vyavahāramāla'' authored by Ulloor S. Paramesvara Aiyer himself, there is no mention of the authorship of ''Vyavahāramāla''.[ (A PhD thesis on ''Vyavahaaramālā'' submitted to Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskri in 2008)]
Contents
The following list of topics discussed in ''Vyavahāramāla'' indicates the nature of the contents in the work.[ (Chapter IV of a PhD thesis on ''Vyavahaaramālā'' submitted to Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskri in 2008)]
Full texts
* The full text of ''Vyavahāramālā'' in Malayalam script with a translation in Malayalam by Ulloor S. Paramesvara Aiyar is available in Wikimedia at the lin
HERE
* The full text of ''Vyavahāramālā'' in Devanagari script with an English translation is available as part of a Ph D thesis submitted to Kerala University in December 2002:
* Full text of ''Vyavahāramālā'' in Devanagari script is available in the Internet Archive at the lin
HERE
* For a detailed account of the work, see the PhD thesis on ''Vyavahaaramālā'' submitted to Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit in 2008:
* A digitized scanned copy of a palm-leaf manuscript of a detailed commentary in Malayalam of ''Vyavahāramālā'' composed probably sometime before 1809 has been preserved in the Gundert Collection in the University of Tübingen. The same is available for view at the lin
HERE
and for download at the lin
HERE
(270 MB).
References
{{reflist
Political philosophy literature
Social sciences
Customary legal systems
Ancient Indian law
Law of India
Legal history of India