The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c21.70

v1.c21.70

In religion, as was to be expected, denying the authority of the Vedas, carping at the teaching of the Vedic seers, and wavering in regard to any traditional duty is to ‘destroy one’s soul’ (Vas., xii, 41), and there is no salvation for a man who devotes himself to epicurean ways or to captivating men or to philology (*çabdaçāstra*, Vas., x, 20). On the other hand the Upanishad doctrine that a priest who is learned and austere and repeats the sacred texts is not tainted with sin, though he constantly commit sinful acts, is a morally destructive teaching already legalised (Vas., xxvi, 19). The highest named god is Brahmā or Prajāpati, to whom, after the manner of the epic, verses of legal character are assigned. Philosophically the Sūtras are dominated by the Vedānta Ātman-theory, which appears to be known as a system to Āpastamba, whose Sūtra seems to have been a work which arose among the Andhras of the south-eastern coast, and probably is not older than the second century b.c. It recognises, alone among Sūtras, a named Purāṇa (the Bhavishya, ii, 24, 6) and its archaic effect linguistically, which in large measure determined Bühler in his conjecture that this Sūtra might revert to the fifth century, may well be due to the fact that the Andhras retained linguistic peculiarities long after Pāṇini fixed the northern usage. Āpastamba knows the Atharvaveda, as does Vasishṭha, who appears to have been a still later writer. It is true that Bühler arranged a chronological series of Sūtras of the law in the order Gautama, Baudhāyana, Vasishṭha, and Āpastamba; but in doing so he minimised the late characteristics of Vasishṭha (who alone mentions ‘documents’ as legal proofs); and in his remark (*S.B.E.*, xiv, p. xvii) concerning the fourth Veda he appears to have overlooked the passage at vi, 4, where the four Vedas are mentioned. It is also quite probable that the passage which seems to make Baudhāyana earlier than Vasishṭha is interpolated, and Bühler himself admits that many other passages have been tampered with. Whatever the earlier text may have been, the present text, with its free use of *Çloka* verse, its recognition of Dharma Çāstras, its citations from Manu, Vishṇu, etc., and its possible allusion to the Romans (*Romaka*, xviii, 4), seems to be the latest of the legal Sūtras, though containing much older material. In general, the age to which the Sūtras may be assigned cannot well be earlier than the seventh or later than the second century b.c. They represent both the views of different Vedic schools and different localities, from the Andhra country in the S.E. to the countries of the N.W., where probably the school of Vasishṭha is to be sought¹. Probably the Gṛihyas represent the earlier Sūtras; the Dharmas as a whole come later: perhaps 300 B.C. would represent the earliest.