#Vijnaneshvara

“In 2005 the Parliament of India passed an amendment whose operative words are "in a Hindu joint family governed by the Mitakshara law" — a twelfth-century book, cited by name, still being amended by a twenty-first-century legislature. Nobody so obscure has ever governed so many for so long.”

“A son owns a share of the family's ancestral property from the moment he is born — and a commentary built around that one doctrine decided who owned what across most of India for the next nine hundred years.”