Dharma-shastra is equal in age to Jewish law (or older, if its roots do indeed go back to the Vedas, the earliest scriptures of Hinduism) and has greater continuity and longevity than Roman law. The British colonial administration in India affected the system of Hindu law by applying the traditional rules in a hard-and-fast way and by introducing the concept of precedent. Rapid social change, following foreign rule, required many adjustments to India’s body of Hindu law. There was, for example, no provision in the Dharma-shastra for the development of judicial divorce or for the allotting of equal shares to daughters along with sons in their fathers’ estate at his death.