Sir Henry Sumner Maine (1822 - 1888) was an English comparative jurist and historian. His first work, Ancient Law (1861), established his reputation as a scholar and pioneer in the field of comparative law. While a member of the governor-general's council in India (1863 1869), Maine was responsible for the codification of Indian law. In 1869 he returned to England and was appointed to the chair of historical and comparative jurisprudence newly founded in the University of Oxford. During the succeeding years he published the principal matters of his lectures in a carefully revised literary form: Village Communities in the East and the West (1871); Early History of Institutions (1875); Early Law and Custom (1883).