abduction
N.Wrongfully taking away or detaining another person, usually by force or fraud. See child abduction; false imprisonment; kidnapping.
Adam and Eve
The first parents of the human race, whose story is told in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. There is no doubt that until the nineteenth century Adam and Eve were held to be historical ...
adoption
In the heroic monomyth, the divine child is often adopted by menials or animals after being abandoned or threatened in some way. Oedipus, Sigurd (Siegfried), Krishna, Cybele, and Romulus and Remus ...
adultery
The way in which religions have played so vital a role in the protection of what would now be recognized as gene-replication and the nurture of children has contributed to ...
Advice Books
Are texts concerned with prescribing proper behavior for their readers. The locus of this concern may be any combination of outward actions and inner moral or psychological states. Subgenres of ...
affective individualism
An alleged (though controversial) change in family life, said to have accompanied the demographic, industrial, and capitalist revolutions which occurred in 18th-century England, and since experienced ...
African customary law
This useful, albeit disputed, term denotes a body of largely unwritten laws that have been derived from social practices regarded as obligatory by the communities concerned. The account below is ...
age
A person is considered to have full legal capacity on attaining the age of 18 years (see adult). Generally a child is understood to be a person under 18. The ...
agnisthāpana
The name given to the ritual in which the Brahmanical sacrificer and his wife set up the gṛhyāgni (‘domestic fire’) at the time of their marriage.
alimony
N.Formerly, financial provision made by a husband to his wife when they are living apart. Alimony is now known as maintenance or financial provision.
allegations, marriage
A statement made on oath, or affidavit, in order to obtain a marriage licence.
ancient Middle Eastern law
This entry covers Mesopotamia and Egypt. The principal sources for law in ancient Mesopotamia are law collections, king's edicts (misharum edicts), and contemporaneous public and private legal ...
Āṇṭāḷ
9th century ce)Āṇṭāḷ is the one woman among the twelve South Indian poet-saints, the Āḻvārs. She is said to have been the adopted daughter of Periyāḻvār, a brahmin priest at the temple of ...
anuloma
According to Dharmaśāstra, a name for a mixed marriage between a man of a higher varṇa, and a woman of a lower one. The term is also applied to any offspring of that marriage. Its name derives from ...
Arjuna
A Kshatriya prince in the Mahabharata, one of the two main characters in the Bhagavadgita, the charioteer to whom Krishna gives counsel during the battle.
ārṣa marriage
According to ‘The Laws of Manu’ (Manusmṛti) and other Sanskrit legal texts (Dharmaśāstras), one of the eight possible types of marriage, involving the bridegroom making a gift of one or two pairs of ...
Ārya Samāj
A society founded in Bombay in 1875 by Dayānanda Sarasvatī to promote his version of reformed Hinduism. Through it he advocated what he saw as a return to a pure, Veda-based, pre-Mahābhārata war form ...
assimilation
[Ge]The absorption of a minority group into a majority population, during which the group takes on the values and norms of the dominant culture.
aṣṭamangala
(Skt.).In Hinduism, eight objects to make auspicious an important occasion, e.g. the coronation of a king. They are variously listed, but a typical list includes: a lion, bull, elephant ...
