laws and legal codes: Asia and the Pacific 605 or other family members in avoiding an inauspicious day or failing to adequately perform ancestral rituals, funerals, and marriages Any of these acts would cause demons and maligned spirits to impose their reprisals and thus lead to the human crime Indian law was based in the moral codes of the Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions Law was conceived as dharma, the duty or obligation of proper conduct relative to the needs of society over those of the individual The Dharmasastra texts prescribe the obligations and penalties appropriate to caste and social status Like Chinese justice, Indian justice encouraged local resolution, through community tribunals based in caste, trade, artisan, family, sect, and village society Each community could establish and apply its own customs and procedures; in theory, there was no hierarchy among these frequently overlapping, community-based institutions Indian Dharmasastra law was the ideal rather than an absolute, and it was above all intended to make practical legal decisions based on common usage rather than on a written Folio from a Khamsa of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, showing a priest bringing a marriage document; ink and color on paper, Sultunate Period, India, 1450–1500 (Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Purchase, F1959-2) code of law Legal decisions were in the best interests of the community, to maintain local societal harmony consistent with the community’s political, economic, religious, or hereditary hierarchy As did the Chinese, Indians believed that in an orderly hierarchical society, if members behaved according to what was expected of their social rank, righteousness would surely prevail Physical penalties were rare, and there are few records of severe fines Instead, legal decisions mandated restitutions or public admission of wrong and recommitment to acceptable behavior Subsequent offenses resulted in boycotts or expulsions Rare death penalties were subject to a king’s review before an execution Kings involved and asked the guidance of Hindu and Buddhist clergy, scholars of Dharmasastra, before making legal decisions In the absence of an inclusive bureaucrat system, Indian kings might exercise their legal authority directly, or more commonly through their delegated agents who would travel the countryside on their behalf A royal agent’s local judicial intervention resulted from a community’s failure to make their own resolution If a legal appeal reached the court, a court tribunal sent officials to gather the facts of a case, and to determine the common practice of the groups involved From the local community’s perspective, such royal legal intervention was undesirable, since the king’s justice ultimately served the king’s rather than the community’s interests Legal interventions frequently discovered local improprieties that resulted in unintended fines, penalties, or additional taxes Thus, as in China, state interventions were infrequent, and local resolution was the norm Six text-based traditions of law developed in Southeast Asia during the medieval era In each case the legal system localized either Indian or Chinese legal culture The Burmese dhammathat (dharma) and Thai-Lao thammasat legal traditions consisted of numerous texts that incorporated India-derived Buddhist modifications of Dharmasastra law according to local needs Cambodian law developed in the era of the Angkor-based court (eighth to 14th century) and made similar local modifications of the Indian Dharmasastra Hindu and Buddhist legal codes Numerous Sanskrit and Khmer temple inscriptions highlight issues of landholding and labor rights as they relate to royal patronage of Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines In Vietnam the 15th-century Hong Duc code marked a Confucian departure from previous reliance on Buddhist codes of law The new secular law code, in common with the old, included significant local modifications that were consistent with prevailing Vietnamese social practice, with notable concern relative to local landholding, social, and ritual practices as these related to royal authority Javanese law, which was codified in the 14th-century Majapahit court, was also Indic inspired with local variation