The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c23.50

v1.c23.50

Deficient as are the legal text-books in arrangement and self-contradictory as are their enactments, they form a priceless heritage of a past which would otherwise have been largely lost to us, for they may be accepted as reflecting real and not artificial or invented conditions of life. Very material evidence has been furnished in the last few years as regards the trustworthy character of the information given by authors of the law-books. As remarked above concerning the Sūtras (*v. sup.* p. 221), the idea that Brāhman tradition is manufactured in order to glorify the Brāhmans and that in the time of Buddha there were no castes, is rendered inadmissible by the fact that all Hindu literature acknowledges the main facts as stated in the epics and law-books. The fresh evidence on this point is supplied by the text of the Arthaçāstra called the Kauṭilīya, which may date from about 300 B.C. and is in accord with the Sūtras and Çāstras in all the chief points which these works have in common. This Arthaçāstra, which forms the subject of Chapter XIX in this work, recognises castes and mixed castes and agrees with the Çāstra of the law-givers in a multitude of instances, showing that the scheme of law arranged by the Brāhmans was neither ideal nor invented but based upon actual life¹. Here for example is repeated almost verbatim the rule against debts between father and son; the kinds of marriage are the same; the antithesis between Ārya and Çūdra is maintained; the rule that the wage is one-tenth the gain 'without previous agreement' is identical with that of Yājñavalkya cited above, etc. As the Kauṭilīya is a manual of rules imposed by a practical statesman, it is impossible to suppose that the conditions it depicts are imaginary, yet the same conditions are found in the Sūtras, etc. If it was indisputable that this work belonged to the third or fourth century B.C., it would be of the utmost importance historically. As it is, some of the provisions of the Kauṭilīya agree with those of later rather than earlier law-books, and for the present it is not advisable to accept all its rules as belonging to the time assigned to the work as a whole².