The Rashtrakutas and their Times c20.153

c20.153

A verse occurring in the Manu Smṛti and several other works states that tapas or austerities was the order of the day in the Kṛta age, quest of knowledge or truth in the Tretā, sacrifices in the Dvāpara and charity in the Kali.¹¹⁴ An examination of the data belonging to our period shows that this verse represents the realities of the situation at least as far as our age is concerned. Austerities were not unknown to our period; Sulaiman refers to many ascetics that used to mortify the flesh in a variety of ways in the 9th century Deccan.¹¹⁵ The quest after the truth or knowledge was also fairly serious as the new philosophical activity which commenced with S'ankara shows. The S'rauta sacrifices had practically disappeared and their place was taken by the Smārta ones. The average man of our age, however, believed in the efficacy of charity for the securing of religious merit. A verse in the Kalas-Budruk plates, dated 1026 A. D.,¹¹⁶ says that neither learning nor wealth produce so much merit as charity. The gift of a piece of land was regarded as the most meritorious, the reason, as it is given in an 11th century record, (117) being that all wealth was really produced from land. The close connection between the Smriti writers and the composers of the epigraphical records of our age is shown by the fact that most of the benedictory and imprecatory stanzas in our grants are borrowed from the contemporary Smritis and Puranas, or vice versa. The verse quoted in the previous foot-note has been attributed to *S'ivadharmapurāṇa* by Hemādri.(118) Bṛhaspati Smriti verses 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 39 & 17 correspond to the well known verses beginning with