Definition
A lakh (also spelled lac or lac) is a unit of numerical reckoning used in the Indian subcontinent equal to one hundred thousand (100,000). In legal and commercial documents originating from South Asia — including contracts, judgments, statutes, and property records — monetary amounts, population figures, and quantities are routinely expressed in lakhs rather than in Western hundreds-of-thousands notation. One lakh rupees, for example, equals ₹100,000. Ten lakhs equal one crore (10,000,000). The term appears frequently in colonial-era legal instruments drafted under British Indian administration and continues in active use in the legal systems of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One hundred thousand (10⁵): 100,000, that is, with Indian digit grouping, 1,00,000.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Same as Lac, one hundred thousand.
The common and legal meanings here are essentially identical — lakh is a term of quantity, not a legal term of art. Its importance to legal research is not definitional but navigational: a researcher unfamiliar with South Asian digit grouping conventions may misread a figure expressed as "1,00,000" as one thousand rather than one hundred thousand, or may fail to recognize that "5 lakhs" in a contract or judgment means 500,000 units of currency. The gap is not between common and legal meaning, but between Western and South Asian numerical notation systems.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research hazard with lakh is numerical misreading. Colonial-era Indian legal documents, Anglo-Indian commercial contracts, and modern South Asian court judgments express sums in lakhs (and crores), not in millions or billions. A researcher working with Indian High Court decisions, Privy Council appeals from British India, or contemporary arbitration awards involving South Asian parties must be fluent in this notation or risk misunderstanding the scale of damages, valuations, penalties, or statutory thresholds by orders of magnitude.
In the Law Mind corpus, documents touching British colonial administration, Indo-British commercial law, land revenue records, and post-independence South Asian statutory materials will use lakh as a matter of course. Revenue statutes, tenancy legislation, and land reform acts from the Indian subcontinent routinely set thresholds in lakhs. Researchers should also note that the Indian digit grouping system punctuates differently: 1,00,000 (one lakh) rather than 100,000 — a comma placement that looks like one thousand to a Western reader scanning quickly.
Bouvier's cross-reference to LAC in the context of navigable waters and French maritime law (lamaneur) is an entirely separate entry that shares spelling only. Researchers must not conflate the two: Bouvier's LAC in the navigable-waters context is the Latin/French word for lake, not the South Asian numerical unit. The shared spelling is a false cognate that can send a researcher down the wrong path in a historical dictionary.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not carry a substantive entry for lakh as a unit of South Asian numerical reckoning. The entries surfaced under LAC in Bouvier's address navigable waters and French maritime pilotage — entirely different concepts that happen to share a spelling variant. This is a meaningful gap in the historical Anglo-American legal dictionary tradition: Bouvier's was compiled primarily for American legal practice, and terms specific to British Indian commercial and administrative law fall outside its core coverage.
Webster's 1913 confirms the definition concisely — "same as Lac, one hundred thousand" — treating it as an ordinary vocabulary item rather than a legal term requiring elaboration. This reflects the term's status: it is not a legal concept with elements or tests, but a unit of measure that carries legal significance when it appears in instruments and judgments.
Researchers relying solely on Anglo-American legal dictionaries will find lakh absent or inadequately treated. For historical legal usage, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases (Yule & Burnell, 1886) remains the authoritative reference for the term's role in British Indian legal and commercial practice.
Jurisdictional Note
Lakh is the standard unit of numerical expression in the legal systems of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. It appears in statutes, court decisions, regulatory filings, and contracts across all these jurisdictions. It is not used in Western legal systems except when those systems encounter South Asian legal instruments or parties.