Snouck Hurgronje, who coined the term 'adat law,' clearly showed to what a small extent Muhammedan law accounts for the content of adat law. The same argument in relation to Hindu law was elaborated by Lekkerkerker in his Hindurecht in Indonesia 1918 (Korn 1948).

Hurgronje had convincingly argued that an adequate understanding of custom and law in Acheh is not forthcoming from philological expertise in Koranic materials ( Benda 1958). This remained the position of the profieldwork faction of scholars over and against armchair anthropology. Lekkerkerker asserted the same point regarding Bali and its Sanskritic-Hindu overlay. Korn and his colleagues spent two decades confirming his assertion.

Korn's massive Het Adatrecht van Bali (1932) was an exemplary product of the ,new and typically Dutch form of science.' Seven-hundred pages are packed with most of the social rules and varying customary usages known in Bali. The tom divides everything according to Western legal divisions relevant to particular beliefs or customs: family law, inheritance law, property law, criminal law, and so forth. Yet the pervading theme is not standardization, but local variation. Korn did not try to force a Western legal apparatus onto a more subtle Balinese ritual and social