Robert Lingat

Robert Lingat (Rō̜ Lǣngkā, Thai: โรแบร์ แลงกาต์, 1892 – 1972), was a French-born academic and legal scholar most known for his masterwork on the practice of classical Hindu Law.

[1] He died May 7, 1972, one year before the first English translation of his work established it as the single most authoritative text on the concept of dharma in Indian legal history.

[2] This followed three decades after his three-volume Thai-language edition of Siamese laws (1939-1940) earned him recognition from renowned legal scholar John Henry Wigmore as "the greatest (and almost the only) authority on Siamese legal history," adding: "It will be a notable day when the learned editor will produce for us (as surely he is destined to do) a translation in French.

He married in 1920 Leontine Drouet and had three daughters, Pauline Vicheney (1935-2018), Liliane Bongiorni (1937-2021) and Renée Richard (born in 1939).

There he published the French edition of The Classical Law of India, in which he details the origin of the Indian legal system.

Thus the dharmasastras, while theoretically expounding only natural (not positive) law, in fact regulated the entire legal life of man.