This article is an ethnographic exploration of a promiscuously present and instantly recognisable legal and cultural artefact in India, the stamp paper document under the Indian Stamp Act, 1899. The ‘stamp paper’ is a documentary form that is constantly escaping from its legal moorings in revenue and evidentiary law, and is being replicated, mimed and recommissioned, both in form and in substance, and in ways which blur the domains of the legal, the quasi-legal and the non-legal. Its bureaucratic authority is produced through protocols and rituals of writing, verification, identification, attestation and authorisation performed by paper workers such as court typists, stamp vendors, notaries and oath commissioners. Yet the stamp paper is simultaneously viewed as notoriously fraudulent and legally invalid—its use redundant and truth functionaries infamously corruptible. Focusing on the materiality of the stamp paper, as it circulates through the interstitial spaces of Patiala House Court Complex in New Delhi, this article seeks to address this curious paradox and provides an account of the social life of law through the travels of an emblematic yet dubious legal form.

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“不值得写在纸上”：邮票纸质文件和印度的法律生活

本文是对 1899 年《印度印花税法》下的印章纸文件在印度混杂存在且可立即识别的法律和文化文物的民族志探索。“印章纸”是一种文献形式，它不断摆脱其在印度的合法地位。税收和证据法，并且正在被复制、模仿和重新委托，无论是在形式上还是实质上，并且以模糊法律、准法律和非法律领域的方式。其官僚权威是通过文书工作人员（例如法院打字员、邮票商、公证人和宣誓专员）执行的书写、验证、鉴定、证明和授权的协议和仪式产生的。然而，邮票纸同时被视为臭名昭著的欺诈和法律无效——它使用冗余和真相工作人员臭名昭著的腐败。关注邮票纸的重要性，因为它在新德里 Patiala House Court Complex 的间隙空间中流通，这篇文章试图解决这个奇怪的悖论，并通过一个具有象征意义的旅行来描述法律的社会生活。可疑的法律形式。