If we had a complete Digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws, after the model of Justinian’s inestimable Pandects, compiled by the most learned of the native lawyers, with an accurate verbal translation of it into English; and if copies of the work were reposited in the proper offices of the Sedr Divani ’Adalat, and of the Supreme Court, that they might occasionally be consulted as a standard of justice, we should rarely be at a loss for principles at least and rules of law applicable to the cases before us, and should never perhaps, be led astray by the Pandits or Maulavi’s, who would hardly venture to impose on us, when their impositions might so easily be detected (Jones 795).
Sir William Jones. “485. To the First Marquis of Cornwallis.“ The Letters of Sir William Jones, vol. 2. Clarendon Press, 1970, pp. 794-800.