Primary corporate groups, Kingships, and Brahmins were the factions, which conveyed Hindu jurisprudence in practice.
[2] Corporate groups in medieval India included, but were not limited to, merchants, traders, religious specialists, soldiers, agriculturalists, pastoralists, and castes.
These groups held legal prominence in classical Indian society because the primary authority and responsibility for law at the time came from the community, not a state polity.
[1] Particularly, early Dharmasūtra (dharmasutra) texts, beginning in about the 2nd BC, recognized a full-fledged theology surrounding the household institution.
[3] The texts viewed households and families as the archetype of community, "an exemplary institution of religious and legal reflection of Hindu jurisprudence".
For example, the texts are most explicit in reference to quotidian household acts such as eating, bathing, creating a family, etc.
The focus on the household and other local institutions helped to identify the shared goals and goods within society which are inherent to Hindu law.
[3] Furthermore, small-scale communities such as the household were more effective in imposing the acceptance of common values and core ideas.
Specifically, the concept of ācāra in the Hindu legal texts (i.e. the Dharmaśāstra) legitimized these localized laws.
[1] Ācāra allowed localized corporate groups to create their own laws, especially in the situations where Hindu legal texts were vague, ambiguous, or completely silent.
[3] In particular, ācāra of specific corporate groups plays out in practice as "norms accepted and imposed by the leaders of various social institutions".
[3] The key to the legitimization of these norms created and accepted by the leaders of corporate groups is the concept of the ‘good person’ in ācāra.
This principal allows for the dissemination of sastric and Vedic control over practice through the mediation of experts who are learned in the texts.
[5] The dharmasastras, starting with Manu, first addressed the function of the king pertaining to the administration of Hindu law.
The royal function vests the king with the power of command (kṣatra) and the mission to protect the people and give them the guarantee of security.
[2] The king's spiritual happiness depends on his subjects, for he suffers the consequences of their sins and profits from the merits they acquire.
The royal function gives two main privileges: the right to tax and the right to punish (daṇḍa), and they are benefits outlined solely for the king.
In these cases, although corporate groups such as castes and vocational sects have their own jurisdiction (which came from customary origins) they are still in the king's control.
In addition, royal authority did allow the king to divide tasks of administration amongst ministers and to define the scope and the powers of each ministry.
[2] Davis further attributes the lack of royal legislation or edict to the social context presumed by Hindu jurisprudence (i.e. the subordination of the state to the household).
[2] The superiority of the Brahmin is not attached to their birth (varna) but to the fact that they are devoted to the study of the Veda, and thus are qualified to instruct other people.
[2] There are no references of Judicial procedure in early Vedic times but there was a frequent mention of the term Rta implying that there was a divine cosmic order by which the universe was regulated.
These sources are the three Pramanas (possession, documents, and witnesses) logical inference, the usages of the country, sapathas (oaths and ordeals), the king's edict and admission of the litigants.
Ordeals played a significant part in the judicial administration of ancient India, even though they were not really rational and couldn't really detect guilt.
Manu recommended that when human proofs failed Sapatha or oath could be applied in search of the truth.