The Code Of Hammurabi And The Laws Of Manu
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The Laws of Manu were complied over the years between 200 – 400 C.E. While the position of women in early Vedic India had been good, these laws illustrate the efforts of the Brahmin elite to restrict womens legal independence in this later period. Both the laws of Manu and Hammurabi were related to marriage, family law, and the ways in which female behavior is regulated in both legal codes. Hammurabi was the ruler who chiefly established the greatness of Babylon, the worlds first metropolis, The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code that dates back to about 1772 BC. The code was carved upon a black stone monument, eight feet high, it was clearly intended to be reared in for the public to view. The Code of Hammurabi was one of several sets of laws in the ancient near east. The stone was found in the year 1901 in a city of the Persian mountains. The early collections of the code include the Code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (ca. 2050 BC), the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1930 BC) and the codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1870 BC), the later laws included the Hittite laws, the Assyrian laws, and Mosaic Law. Both the Code of Hammurabi and The laws of Manu provided freedoms for women and they provided protection for them, overall I believe the Code of Hammurabi provided better protection and freedom to the women.
During the time period of (1792-1750B.C.) was Hammurabi first two decades of his forty two year reign, during this time Hammurabi fortified several cities in northern Babylonia. In 1764, Babylon defeated the coalition of Elam, Subartu and Eshnunna. By 1762, Hammurabi claimed to have “established the foundations of Sumer and Akkad, a phrase borrowed from Sumerian royal hymns to express the ideal of pan-Babylonian rule. With the conquest of Mari in 1759, virtually all of Mesopotamia had come under Babylonian rule. The purpose of the Code of Hammurabi was to encourage people to accept authority of a king, who was trying to give common rules to govern the subjects behavior. Five of the laws in the Code of Hammurabi consisted of one, “If a man has taken a wife and has not executed a marriage contract, that woman is not a wife.”(
The Laws of Manu were complied over the years between 200 – 400 C.E. The Laws of Manu were put into place mainly for the reason, “that rulers were obliged to be considerate in judging and punishing their subjects. It claimed that punishment kept the world in order, that punishment properly applied kept all people happy, but applied without consideration it destroyed everything. The Laws of Manu claimed that without punishment, inferior people would “take the place” of their superiors, that the castes would be corrupted by intermixture, that “all barriers” would fall and “men would rage against each other.” (www.fsmitha.com). The first of the five laws I found that fall into the Laws of Manu is, “If the female members live in grief, the family is destroyed, and if the female members are happy then the family flourishes in all directions.” (www.womeninworldhistory.com). This law indeed benefits females because it keeps members of their families from tarnishing them. The second law that I found in the Law of Manu that affects women rights in marriage and freedom is, “in that family, where the husband is pleased with his wife and the wife with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting.” (www.loyno.edu). This law