Historian Mahmood Kooria of the University of Edinburgh has urged scholars to rethink some of the most taken-for-granted assumptions that shape modern engagements with the premodern global history of law.
Delivering the Prof. Scaria Zachariah Memorial Lecture at the Mahatma Gandhi University here on Monday, Dr. Kooria drew on examples from the Indian Ocean world and beyond to outline certain key perspectives that are essential for understanding law before modernity, especially when viewed against modern or modernist notions of legality.
According him, ritual formed a central component of law in premodern societies, particularly within religious legal traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, where law governed everyday life from worship to crime. He also sought to challenge the idea of the State’s monopoly over law, noting that in many premodern contexts legal authority was dispersed among jurists, families, and communities. Law was often created and administered by jurists rather than rulers, making legal pluralism a useful, though limited, framework for understanding premodern legal orders.
He, at the same time, rejected the tendency to equate modernity with the rule of law, arguing that premodern societies possessed strong notions of justice and legal order. He also urged historians to treat legal texts as valuable sources for social history rather than dismissing them as purely doctrinal, since they offer insights into everyday conflicts and social relations. Dr. Kooria also stressed the importance of studying paratexts such as marginal notes, interlinear translations, and manuscript features, drawing on social codicology and new philology to better understand how law was transmitted, interpreted, and lived.
The session included memorial talk by Aju K. Narayanan and was chaired by Dineshan V.
Published – December 15, 2025 08:57 pm IST
