Modern Transformation of a Traditional Civilization: Maine on Law and Society in India

Li Hongji

Published in Chinese Journal of Sociology, 2024, Issue 5. 

Abstract: India is the focal point of Maine's theory of social evolution and also the Eastern civilization on which classical Western social thinkers focused their attention. This paper attempts to present the three stages of Maine's understanding of India in order to answer the question of how his theory of social evolution responds to the questions of civilizational differentiation and transformational adaptation. In his early studies, Maine noted that traditional civilizations were transforming "from status to contract," and that stagnant India, constrained by religion, failed to achieve this transformation. During his tenure in India, Maine observed that the policy of transplanting English law had led to the rapid disintegration of Indian customary law, and he proposed a codification strategy that emphasized the compilation of traditional Indian law as a means of mitigating the bitter conflict between English and Indian law. Meanwhil, Maine pointed out the significance of Indian village communities for the nineteenth-century Indian social order. Upon his return to England, Maine came to a conclusion that the nineteenthcentury India was still under religious influence and could hardly nurture the seeds of modern transformation. However, British-Indian rule had a dual impact on India, both contributing to its modern transformation and seriously disrupting the order of traditional Indian society. He further recognized the differences between the civilizational traditions of the East and the West, while the British colonialists had ignored these complexities. At the same time, he used the "metaphor of conflicting clocks" to reveal the adaptive problem of the modern transformation. Maine placed Indians' adaptation to reform at the center of social progress and legal change. In addition, he expected to educate Indians to embrace reforms and thus achieve civilizational development in India. Maine's observation of India has enriched his evolutionary thought of "from status to contract" and has provided a unique perspective on the evolution and transformation of civilizations in the East and the West.

Keywords: India, Maine, social evolution, modernization, the research of civilization