The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay Presidency from the Earliest Historical Times to the Musalman Conquest c8.s4.42

c8.s4.42

The worship of the Purânic gods flourished; and as in the times of the early Châlukyas the old sacrificial rites were reduced to a system, so during this period the endeavours of the Brâhmans and their adherents were for the first time directed towards reducing the civil and the ordinary religious law to a system, or towards its codification, as it might be called. The texts or precepts on the subject were scattered in a great many Smritis and Purânas; and often there were apparent inconsistencies and the law was doubtful. Nibandhas or digests, of which we have now so many, began to be written in this period, but the form which they first took, and which even now is one of the recognized forms, was that of commentaries on Smritis. Bhoja of Dhârâ, who belongs to the first part of this period, must have written a treatise on the subject, since under the name of Dhâreśvara he is referred to by Vijñāneśvara in his work. He was followed by Vijñāneśvara, who, as we have seen, lived at Kalyāṇa in the reign of Vikramāditya II. Aparārka, another commentator on Yājñavalkya, who calls his work a *nibandha* on the *Dharmaśāstra* or institutes of Yājñavalkya, was a prince of the Śilāhāra family of northern Konkan and was on the throne in Śaka 1109 (A.D. 1187) and in the cyclic year *Parābhava*.¹ Or, if he was the earlier prince of that name, he must have flourished about fifty years before. This movement was continued in the next or thirteenth century by Hemādri, and by Sāyaṇa in the fourteenth.