The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c23.2

v1.c23.2

The law-books, Dharma Çāstras, and especially trained experts in law, Dharma-pāṭhakas, are recognised in the didactic parts of the epic; and codes of law are assigned to various ancient worthies, among whom Manu generally, but not always, holds the chief place. The difference between the formal law-book, Çāstra, and the Sūtra, also concerned with Dharma, is due mainly to the gradual exclusion of irrelevant matter in the law-book. Whereas in the Sūtra the term *Dharma* embraces all domestic duties, religious and ethical, with slight attention paid to formal law, in the completed Çāstra law itself is the sole subject discussed. But this difference marks only the extremes, the primitive Dharma Sūtra and the law-book of the fifth century a.d. Between the two comes a number of works bearing the title of law-book but still retaining in large measure the characteristics of the Sūtra. Likewise the formal distinction between a prose Sūtra and a metrical law-book is bridged by a period when legal works were partly prose and partly verse. In the end, it was found more convenient to versify the rules as the Hindus versified all knowledge, and the metre chosen for this purpose was the later *çloka*, which ousted both prose and the older *trishtubh* metre still used in early Sūtras and Çāstras. The name also is not absolutely fixed. The Sūtra is sometimes called Çāstra. Vishṇu’s law-book, for example, is both Sūtra and Çāstra, as well as Smṛiti, a general term for traditional teaching.