CONCLUSION

After analysing the law of sales through three major period which as a whole constituted the
majority of periods of ancient India and also looking through three major documents and others
,the researcher can conclude that all the laws of sales we have in terms of sales of goods act,
consumer protection act and many laws of contract , all had there direct or indirect genesis in the
ancient hindu laws and customary provisions which existed from time immemorial. Although the
trade practices then, were not as sophistcated as they are now but we can see that the concern for
the rights of buyers and sellers are not very different and not irrelevalent now.

Although there were no codified law in form of legislation in that period, But as we can see all
important, The Indian Contract Act, 1872, The Sale of Goods Act, 1930, Indian Partnership Act,
1932, all had there introduction in the ancient law texts in some way or another. Then the ancient
time law had the same objective behind their laws as those of today’s laws. Coming to how much
these laws were effective, in pre mauryan period the laws were quite simpler as the trade was
also quite simpler. The violations were not so grave. The existing few laws given by manu and
implemented by the administration was sufficient enough to have proper establishment of trade
activities. In mauryan period already the establishment of big empire was done, population was
higher than the pre mauryan period and so did the market was big and grew more complex. If
we see the law of sales in Arthasastra it had many specific laws which were very strict and had
very meticulous incorporation of all possible aspects of trade. We can infer from these the high
demand for these laws because amount of possible violations which could occur or else why
there would be requirement of such laws. Kautilya must should be given credit for his strong
incorporation of sales law to regulate sales in state of as magnanimous as Mauryan empire.
Coming to post Mauryan age and the Gupta period specially, the laws stated above, speaks for
themselves as the amount and standard of modern relevancy these laws have is really
appreciable. Yajnavalkya smriti being crafted very systematically and scientifically was the most
important content provider of sales law during the gupta period and the time after that, and still
its concept are prevalent. It really addressed various complex aspects of sales and trades and all
those laws had not been there , there could have been chaos in the gupta period. So it was
successful in addressing various complex aspects of laws of sales. and was the most important
source of all other sources of ancient laws.

It can be concluded that all important aspects of sales, like those of consumer protection, price
checking, quality checking of food like FSSAI, Contracts, partnership and documents making
all had there prevalence in ancient India and were a very important part of law of sales in ancient
times.