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A History of Sanskrit Literature c30: XXII. Civil and Religious Law (Dharmaçāstra)

A History of Sanskrit Literature c30

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Contents

XXII. Civil and Religious Law (Dharmaçāstra)

1. The Origin of the Dharmaçāstras

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IT was perfectly natural that when Sūtras began to be composed on matters of ritual there should be adopted the practice of including in these texts instructions on matters closely akin to ritual, the daily life of the people, their duties of all kinds, including matters which more advanced civilization would classify as questions of etiquette and social usage, moral, legal, or religious. Included of course in such rules must be regulation of all issues affecting caste, especially the vital one of marriage, and, as it was clearly customary for Brahmins to be approached to act as arbitrators in disputes or to advise as to the due custom, these books came to serve in some measure as rudimentary texts on law. Sūtras of this kind were distinguished as Dharmasūtras from those dealing with the more formal and the domestic ritual, the Çrautasūtras and Gṛhyasūtras, but we may assume that no very vital distinction was originally felt between the various parts, and the whole could rank as one Kalpasūtra. Like Sūtras in general, they were composed in prose, usually as briefly as possible, but with Çlokas or Triṣṭubh verses here and there interposed to justify a doctrine or sum it up effectively.

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Of these old Dharmasūtras several are preserved but in different conditions. One of the oldest is the *Gautamīya Dharmaçāstra*¹—the title Dharmasūtra is here as in other cases merged in the wider name; it seems to belong to the Rāṇāyanīya school of the *Sāmaveda*, and its text is not free from interpolation. Another old text is the *Hārīta Dharmaçāstra*² in thirty Adhyāyas, extant in one manuscript. Both these are mentioned by the *Vāsiṣṭha* *Dharmaçāstra*,¹ which, however, is preserved either in fragmentary or interpolated manuscripts; it mentions Manu as an authority while it is quoted in the *Manu Smṛti*. Apparently we may believe Kumārila when he assigns it to a lost *Ṛgveda* school, the Vāsiṣṭhas. Yama and Prajāpati appear in it as authorities. The *Baudhāyana Dharmaçāstra*² and the *Āpastambīya Dharma-sūtra*³ are both parts of greater complexes, Sūtras of schools of the *Black Yajurveda*, but the former is interpolated, while the latter is well preserved. The school of Hiraṇyakeçin is as usual closely akin to the Āpastambīya. The dates of these works have often been determined⁴ on the assumption that the Āpastambīya by reason of its incorrectnesses of speech, and its treatment of the Vedic Çvetaketu of the *Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa* among recent personages, cannot be placed later than the fourth or fifth century B. C., but this naturally depends on many assumptions including that of the date of Pāṇini, and it might be wiser to place the date as far down as the second or third century B. C.

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¹ Ed. London, 1876; ĀnSS. 61, 1910; BS. 50, 1917; trans. G. Bühler, SBE. ii. On all these texts see J. Jolly, *Recht und Sitte* (1896).

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² Jolly, IA. xxv. 147 f.; OC. x, ii. 117 ff.

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¹ Ed. BSS. 23, 1916; trans. SBE. xiv.

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² Ed. AKM. 8, 1884 and 1922; trans. SBE. xiv.

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³ Ed. BSS. 1892–4; trans. SBE. ii.

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⁴ See Winternitz, GIL. iii. 480 f.

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The *Vaiṣṇava Dharmaçāstra*⁵ is even more strikingly interpolated, for Vaiṣṇavas have turned it into the shape of a dialogue between Viṣṇu and the earth. In fact, however, it goes back to a Dharmasūtra of the Kāṭhaka school of the *Black Yajurveda*, just as the Hārīta, which as it stands is in prose with much verse intermingled, represents the Maitrāyaṇīya school. The writing up of the Vaiṣṇava shows knowledge of Greek terms of astronomy and astrology, and cannot be placed before the third century A. D. The *Vaikhānasa Dharmaçāstra*⁶ in three chapters deals with the duties of the castes and of the different stages of the life of the Brahmin, but predominantly with the period of life when asceticism should be practised. It has the appearance of a late work drawn up in the Sūtra style, but it may contain some matter which was given in the older text known to Baudhāyana.⁷ Grave doubt exists as to the antiquity of the alleged Dharmasūtras of Paiṭhīnasi, attached to the *Atharvaveda*, of Çāṅkhalikhita¹ attached to the *White Yajurveda*, of Uçanas, Kāçyapa, Bṛhaspati, and others. We may reasonably suspect that the works passing under these names were later imitations of the older style of Sūtras; in the case of Çāṅkhalikhita it certainly seems that the sages Çaṅkha and Likhita owe their existence to a misunderstanding of the old idea of the fate or law written by the gods on men’s foreheads.

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⁵ Ed. BI. 1881; trans. SBE. vii.

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⁶ Ed. TSS. 28, 1913. Cf. Th. Bloch, *Über das Gṛhya- und Dharmasūtra der Vaikhānasa* (1896).

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⁷ ii. 6. 11. 14.

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¹ Ludwig, WZKM. xv. 307 ff.

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The unsatisfactory state of the text of these works is a proof of what was inevitable, the decline in importance of the old Vedic schools, which had formerly preserved the text intact, so that for instance a Vaiṣṇava sect could appropriate to itself the old Kāṭhaka Dharmasūtra. There developed instead at an early date, it would seem, the tendency to study law, in the widest sense of that term, in special schools, which therefore were not content to adopt the practices of any single Vedic school. To the activities of these schools we doubtless owe the vast amount of didactic verse which we find in the *Mahābhārata*² and in the later law-books. These schools, however, were strictly Brahmanical, and they stood out in point of view from the schools of *Arthaçāstra* which we shall have to consider, and which dealt with politics and practical life from the standpoint, not of the old Brahmanical code, but of practical commonsense as engendered by actual contact with administration in all its branches. They represent in contrast to these schools the Brahmanical ideals in their widest sense as opposed to these ideals transmuted under the pressure of the functions arising from active participation in the direction of affairs; they represent in a sense the general Brahmanical feeling as contrasted with the narrow realism of the Purohitas, domestic priests, and their associates.

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² Cf. the German evidence of the close relation of epic poetry, legal poetry, and religious works; R. Koegel, *Gesch. der deutschen Litt.*, i. 1. 97, 242 ff.

2. The Smṛti of Manu

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This is the point of view from which we can best understand the origin of the *Mānava Dharmaçāstra* or *Manu Smṛti*, and the later Smṛtis. These works have the common characteristic that they claim to be generally applicable to all orthodox Hindus and cover the duties of all the castes; though they differ from the Dharmasūtras proper by the much greater development which they accord to the duties of the king and the distinctly more advanced treatment of what we style civil and criminal law. Their compilers, it is clear, drew largely on the floating mass of popular principles, and they adopted the verse form in which this was couched, while they were under the influence of the epic with its practical illustration of principles of polity and its easy versification which presented comparative simplicity of imitation. Even later law-books acknowledge beside the Çruti, holy writ, and the Smṛtis themselves the usage of experts (*çiṣṭācāra*) and the customs of places, castes, and families as sources of law, and these naturally were exploited by the makers of the Smṛtis. Further, in order to secure acceptance for their works, they were only too anxious to ascribe them divine provenance and to pass them off as the utterances of old sages.

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That one of these sages was Manu followed naturally from the fact that as the man who escaped the deluge,¹ accepted by some authorities at least, he was the renewer of sacrificial ordinances and the dispenser of maxims of justice. The *Taittirīya Saṃhitā*² declares that all he said was medicine, Yāska³ cites him—not our text—for the law of succession, the Gṛhyasūtras, the Dharmasūtras, the epic repeatedly assert that Manu said so and so. Only in part do these assertions agree with the *Manu Smṛti*; even Açvaghoṣa's⁴ citations of a *Mānava Dharma* agree only twice with that text. An investigation of the epic⁵ reveals that, without any citation of Manu, there are especially in books iii, xii, and xvi, 260 verses, say a tenth of the Smṛti, in substance and largely even in form identical with verses of the Smṛti. As in some cases the epic, in others the Smṛti, shows the more original form, the priority of either may be excluded, and the verses be referred to a common source; this is supported by the recurrence of similar phenomena in other cases, the *Vāsiṣṭha Dharmaçāstra* having 39, the text of Viṣṇu 160 verses in common. On the other hand, especially in book xiii of the epic, we find real knowledge in the form of citations with Manu as the authority of the *Manu Smṛti*; the Nārāyaṇīya episode of xii undoubtedly used the Dharmaçāstra of Manu and texts ascribed to Uçanas and Bṛhaspati. Manu again recognizes the heroes and legends of the epic, so that it is clear that, while the older parts of the epic were composed before the *Manu Smṛti* and the didactic parts of the text often merely draw from the same sources as the Smṛti, yet the Smṛti was in existence much as it now is before the epic was finally redacted as we have it. Unluckily this gives us little help towards a genuine date, and the wide limits of 200 B. C. to A. D. 200 are still all that can be legitimately asserted. The former limit arises from the mention of Yavanas, Çakas, Kāmbojas, and Pahlavas, showing that the work was written when the frontiers were no longer safe from invasion, the latter by general probability, and priority to the other Smṛtis.

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¹ *Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, i. 5. 1. 7.

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² ii. 2. 10. 2.

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³ iii. 4.

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⁴ In the *Vajrasūcī*, if that be his.

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⁵ See Bühler, SBE. xxv, whose trans. is most valuable.

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While we may readily believe that the kernel in some degree of the Smṛti was formed by an older Dharmasūtra, and, while it is natural to see in this the *Mānava Dharmasūtra* of a branch of the Maitrāyaṇīya school of the Black Yajurveda, it must be admitted that no strict proof is possible. The *Vāsiṣṭha Dharmaçāstra*¹ cites from the Mānava a long passage in prose and verse which agrees in part with the Smṛti, and some minor detailed similarities can be traced between the Smṛti and the fortunately extant Gṛhyasūtra of the Mānavas.² The difficulties in the text which here and there occur, and occasional incongruities, may best be accounted for by use of an old Sūtra. The Smṛti itself ascribes its origin to Brahman, whence it came to men via Manu and Bhṛgu; while the *Nārada Smṛti* tells of a Smṛti in 100,000 verses by Manu reduced to 12,000 by Nārada, 8,000 by Mārkaṇḍeya and 4,000 by Sumati, son of Bhṛgu. This might suggest that there was a successive series of redactions of the original Sūtra, and the inconsistencies in the Smṛti, as well as later allusions to a *Vṛddha-Manu* and *Bṛhan-Manu*,³ have been adduced in support of this view. It seems, however, much more probable that the Smṛti is an early attempt at composition, whence its defects, while the larger texts were writings up of a popular original. Unfortunately we cannot find any historical event to explain precisely why the new effort became specially appropriate; there was a Brahmanical revival in the first century B.C.,¹ though on a small scale and no great duration, and the Gupta revival of the fourth century is probably rather late for the composition of the work. In what sense it was an individual production or the work of a group we cannot say.

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¹ iv. 5–8.

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² P. von Bradke, ZDMG. xxxvi. 417 ff., 433 ff.; G. B. Beaman, *On the Sources of the Dharma-Śāstras of Manu und Yājñavalkya* (1895).

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³ G. Herberich, *Zitate aus Vṛddhamanu und Bṛhanmanu* (1893).

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¹ Cf. the Vikramāditya epoch; in the second century B. C. Puṣyamitra's rule was decidedly Brahmanical, and Wema Kadphises was a Māheçvara, devotee of Çiva; Bhandarkar (*Early History of India*, pp. 63 ff.) would put *Manu* in the Gupta era.

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Book i contains an interesting semi-philosophical account of creation in the popular Paurānic type of a realistic Vedānta combined with Sāṁkhya terms, including the essential doctrine of the three constituents of nature, which, however, is not independent but a creation, as also are the souls. In ii the sources of law are declared, and the duties of the student; in iii–v the householder occupies attention; his marriage, daily rites, funeral offerings (iii), occupation and general rules of life (iv), lawful and forbidden food, impurity and purification, and rules as to women. Book vi deals with the two further stages of life, the hermit in the forest and the ascetic. In vii we come to the duties of the king, including general political maxims. In viii and ix we have civil and criminal law, including procedure and evidence, especially ordeals; the topics are given as eighteen, a precision without any parallel in the Sūtras; recovery of debts; deposit and pledge; sale without ownership; partnership concerns; subtraction of gifts; non-payment of wages; non-performance of agreement; rescission of sale and purchase; masters and herdsmen; disputes as to boundaries; defamation; assault and hurt; theft; violence; adultery; duties of husband and wife; inheritance and partition; gambling and wagers. Book ix adds an account of the duties of kings and of those of Vaiçyas and Çūdras. In x are dealt with the mixed castes, the rules as to occupation affecting the castes, and occupation in time of distress when normal rules must yield. In xi we find rules for gifts, sacrifices and penances, while xii follows the sinner to his retribution in the next life by the rules of transmigration, and adds counsel regarding the means of attaining release. In this as in i we have the popular Vedānta with strong Sāṁkhya and Yoga influences.

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The *Manu Smṛti*, however, is not merely important as a law-book; it is unquestionably rather to be compared with the great poem of Lucretius, beside which it ranks as the expression of a philosophy of life; in that case, however, the views presented were merely those of a school of wide but not commanding influence; in Manu we have the soul of a great section of a people. Characteristic also is the lack of individuality in the work, which causes so deep a contrast with the passionate utterances of Lucretius against the tyranny of superstition: *tantum religio potuit suadere malorum*. To the author instead all is perfectly ordered in a world created by the divine power, regulated according to the principle of absolute justice by that power. Heretics existed, but they are passed over with severe condemnation; the life of cities and affairs is little in the thoughts of the writer, who instead envisages a simple kingdom in which the Brahmins take the first place, and in close accord with them, enforcing their discipline, abides the king; Vaiçyas and Çūdras, the vast bulk of the people, are recognized, but disposed of with a curious brevity, and nothing better than the doctrine of mixed castes, into which even the Yavana and Çaka are pressed, is adduced to account for the vast numbers who had no claim to be even Vaiçyas or Çūdras. The hand of a narrow religion lies heavily over the work, and its pedantry is seen in the treatment of infinitely small transgressions of etiquette as crimes requiring grave penalties hereafter, if not in this world, but remediable by penances to be ordered by the Brahmins—a source of profitable employment. The failure to evolve any clear plan is obvious, but in complete agreement with Indian modes of thought. Some advance, too, is visible—doubtless derived from the law schools in the classification of the topics of law, for the five which are concerned with criminal law are grouped together even if they appear between sections on civil law; moreover, beside the old relentless cruelty of primitive law, there does appear recognition of the necessity of considering not the mere act, but also the motive of the doer. Law, however, appears not as the possession of the people, but as the privilege of the king, and the king has a sanctity only inferior to the Brahmin; he is a divine creation, doubtless a deliberate attack on the Buddhist doctrine of a social contract which made the king a mere wage-receiver, a doctrine which the more realistic *Arthaçāstra* actually enunciates. The king rewards his supporters by obeying their claims to exemption from punishment for all save the gravest crimes, and the work insists throughout on preferring the high to the low, in lieu of exacting from those in high place a nobler standard of conduct. In these demands for the Brahmins, and in a certain vagueness throughout in the legal sections, it is easy to recognize the hand of the theorist rather than of the practical lawyer. We are seeing law, indeed, but through a somewhat distorting medium in which ethical considerations obscure our vision; thus the use of torture which the *Arthaçāstra* urges is ignored in favour of the ordeal, which the Brahmins preferred both on ideal grounds and as involving their aid in administration. Rationalism, of course, is utterly foreign to the spirit of the writer, but his command of language, his earnestness, his happy similes, his carefully handled metre which almost approaches the standard of correctness of the classical poets, while it preserves some tinge of epic variety, combine to render the work a striking one, however ludicrous may seem to us Nietzsche's¹ preference of it to the Bible.

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¹ *Antichrist*, § 56; *Wille zur Macht*, § 194, cited by Winternitz, GIL. iii. 492, n. 1. On the metre see Oldenberg, ZDMG. xxxv. 181 ff.

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The work is rich in happy expressions of principle; the time for retirement to the forest is given as:

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*gṛhasthas tu yadā paçyed valīpalitam ātmanaḥ*
*āpatyasyaiva cāpatyaṁ tadāraṇyaṁ samāçrayet.*

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'When he sees wrinkles on his face and gray in his hair, and a son born to his son, then should the householder fare to the forest.' The king's divinity is absolute:

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*bālo 'pi nāvamantavyo manuṣya iti bhūmipaḥ*
*mahatī devatā hy eṣā nararūpeṇa tiṣṭhati.*

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'Though a child, a king must not be despised on the score of mere humanity; in him a great deity is embodied in human shape.' The claims of righteousness to respect are effectively depicted:

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*ekaḥ prajāyate jantur eka eva pralīyate*
*eko 'nubhuṅkte sukṛtam eka eva ca duṣkṛtam.*
*mṛtaçarīram utsṛjya kāṣṭhaloṣṭasamam bhuvi*
*vimukhā bāndhavā yānti dharmas tam anugacchati.*

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'Alone man is born, alone he dies, alone he reaps the fruit of good and of evil done by him. Laying down on the ground the body of the dead as if it were a clod or a log, the kin depart with face averted; righteousness alone is his companion.' In the philosophical parts the tone often rises to a grave dignity, reminiscent of the *Bhagavadgītā*.

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Comments on the Smṛti are many; that of Medhātithi is not later than the ninth century, Govindarāja belongs to the twelfth and the popular Kullūka, who follows him, to the fifteenth. The influence of the text is attested by its acceptance in Burma, Siam, and Java as authoritative, and the production of works based on it.

3. The Later Smṛtis

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If we were to believe the *Nārada Smṛti*,¹ it would represent an older account of Manu's views than the *Manu Smṛti*, but the claim is disproved by the contents; it subdivides titles of law into 132, has 15 kinds of slaves, 21 ways of acquiring property, 5 ordeals, 11 classes of witnesses, and lays great stress on records in procedure and written proofs. The term *dīnāra* suggests a date not before the second century A.D.; Bāṇa in the seventh knows it, and Asahāya commented on it in the eighth. It is preserved in two recensions; a prose preface in one claims it as chapter ix of Nārada's recension of Manu, and an old Nepalese manuscript supports the claim, but its validity is dubious. The text cannot vie with Manu in importance, but it here and there contains passages of the same earnestness, as in the admonishments directed to witnesses warning them that 'truth is the one mode of winning purity, truth the ship that bears men to heaven, truth weighed against a thousand horse sacrifices outweighs them, truth is the highest oblation, the highest asceticism, the highest morality, truth the summit of bliss, by telling truth man attains by himself the highest self which is itself truth.'

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¹ Longer text ed. J. Jolly, BI. 1885; trans. SBE. xxxiii.

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The *Bṛhaspati Smṛti*¹ is extant only in fragments, but its character is clear; it is almost a Vārttika on Manu whom it supplements. But it is distinctly more advanced in legal view even than Nārada; it develops further the treatment of records, and it approves, quite out of harmony with Manu, the practice of widow burning; its date may be assigned to the sixth or seventh century.

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¹ Trans. J. Jolly, SBE. xxxiii.; cf. WZKM. i. 275 ff.

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These texts are of minor importance compared with the *Yājñavalkya Smṛti*,² whose title recalls the great authority of the *White Yajurveda*; in point of fact some similarity has been traced to the *Pāraskara Gṛhyasūtra* of that Veda, though also to the *Mānava Gṛhyasūtra*. The Smṛti refers to the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad*, so that the connexion may be accepted as valid. There can be no doubt of its importance or of its posteriority to Manu. It adds written documents to his means of proof, recognizes five in lieu of two ordeals, fire and water, it also knows Greek astrology, and has the term *nāṇaka* for coined gold, suggesting a date not before A.D. 300. The arrangement is better than in Manu; three chapters of about the same length handle rules of conduct, Ācāra, law, Vyavahāra, and penances; the eighteen topics of Manu which are not formally enumerated are in effect adhered to with the addition of one of relations of service and another on miscellaneous topics. Yājñavalkya shows many of the traits of Manu; his outlook is largely similar, and he indulges in philosophical remarks on the fate of the soul in much the same strain of Vedānta-Yoga-Sāṁkhya as appears in Manu. New is an embryology taken from some medical treatise.³ In style there is much resemblance to Manu, but there is less elaboration. The whole duty of man is thus set forth:

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² Ed. and trans. A. F. Stenzler, Berlin, 1849; with *Mitākṣarā*, Bombay, 1882; trans. SBH. 2, 1909.

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³ For his anatomy cf. Hoernle, *Osteology*, pp. 37 ff.

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*satyam asteyam akrodho hrīḥ çaucaṁ dhīr dhṛtir damaḥ*
*saṁyatendriyatā vidyā dharmaḥ sarva udāhṛtaḥ.*

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'Truth, honesty, mildness, modesty, purity, wisdom, firmness, self-control, the restraint of the senses, learning, these make up the whole of righteousness.' Release is won by the knowledge of self: in the midst of the veins is a circle:

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*maṇḍalaṁ tasya madhyastha ātmā dīpa ivācalaḥ*
*sa jñeyas taṁ viditveha punar ājāyate na tu.*

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'In the midst of that circle abides the self as if a motionless light; it must be known, and knowing it no man is born again to life.' But a very much simpler duty is preached for kings:

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*nātaḥ parataro dharmo nṛpāṇāṁ yad raṇārjitam*
*viprebhyo dīyate dravyaṁ prajābhyaç cābhayaṁ sadā.*

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'No higher duty is there than this for kings, to give to Brahmins wealth won in battle and ever to afford protection to their people.' In language and metre Yājñavalkya conforms closely to the style of Manu.

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Yājñavalkya formed the subject of a very large number of important commentaries; the best known, the *Mitākṣarā* of Vijñāneçvara, was written in the south in the eleventh century, and constitutes an important treatise on law, which won acceptance in the Deccan and also in Benares and north India; Colebrooke's version¹ of the section on inheritance gave it currency in the English courts in India. The author used the work of Viçvarūpa;² Aparārka³ wrote on the Smṛti in the twelfth century, while Bālambhaṭṭa Vaidyanātha and his wife Lakṣmīdevī⁴ commented on the *Mitākṣarā* in an interesting manner, emphasizing the claims of women to property rights.

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¹ *Two Treatises on the Hindu Law of Inheritance* (1810).

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² Jolly, GN. 1904, pp. 402 ff.; ed. TSS. 74 and 81.

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³ Ed. ĀnSS. 46, 1903–4.

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⁴ Ed. BI. 1904 ff.

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Other Smṛtis exist in indefinite numbers⁵—one list mentions 152; in many cases we have *Laghu*, *Bṛhat*, or *Vṛddha* forms of the same text, or the same name is given to quite different texts. A Parāçara appears as an authority in Yājñavalkya and is cited by Medhātithi, but the *Parāçara Smṛti*⁶ on which Mādhava wrote in the fourteenth century an elaborate comment, adding a chapter on law to those on custom and penance of the original, is doubtless later than either of these authors. A *Bṛhat* version of this text is five times as long. We have various texts ascribed to Atri, Uçanas, Āpastamba, Dakṣa, Çañkha, Likhita, Saṁvarta, and so on, but more interesting than these which hardly touch on law proper are certain authors of whom we have but fragments; Pitāmaha¹ appears already in Bṛhaspati as an authority on ordeals; Kātyāyana and Vyāsa agree often with Nārada and Bṛhaspati, and juristic verses by Hārīta are found which are not in the Dharmaçāstra preserved. The number of Smṛtis can be augmented from the epic and the Purāṇas which contain long sections which might as well be Smṛtis; thus in a manuscript of the epic is found a *Bṛhad Gautamasmṛti* which is quite different from the old text of Gautama.

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⁵ 28 ed. Bombay, 1883; 27 in ĀnSS. 48. Cf. IOC. i. 372 ff.; ii. 367 ff.

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⁶ Ed. BI. 1890–2; BSS. 1893–1919; trans. BI. 1887.

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¹ K. Scriba, *Die Fragmente des Pitāmaha* (1902).

4. The Digests of Law

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It was a natural result of the number of these Smṛtis that the need was felt for compilations, and we find from the twelfth century onwards many of these digests, Dharmanibandha, prepared at the order of kings. One of the earliest is the *Smṛtikalpataru* of Lakṣmīdhara, foreign minister of Govindacandra of Kanauj (1105–43), who includes religious as well as civil and criminal law and the law of procedure. Halāyudha’s *Brāhmaṇasarvasva*,² written for Lakṣmaṇasena of Bengal, deals with the whole duty of a Brahmin, and is only in minor degree a law-book. The same remark applies to Devaṇṇa Bhaṭṭa’s *Smṛticandrikā* (*c.* 1200), the work of a southern author, and to Hemādri’s *Caturvargacintāmaṇi*,³ in which, written between 1260 and 1309 for Yādava princes, he sets out in enormous detail rules of vows, offerings, pilgrimages, the attainment of release, and offerings to the dead. This text is exceptionally rich in Smṛti citations *in extenso*, as is also the *Madanapārijāta*⁴ of Viçveçvara who wrote for Madanapāla (1360–70), mainly on religious duties, but also on the law of succession. Much more important for law are the *Smṛtiratnākara*⁵ of Caṇḍeçvara, minister of Harasiṁhadeva (*c.* 1325), and the *Cintāmaṇis*⁶ of Vācaspati, who wrote for Harinārāyaṇa of Mithilā (*c.* 1510). Before the fifteenth century, in all probability, Jīmūtavāhana produced his legal work, *Dharma-ratna*, containing the famous *Dāyabhāga*¹ which dominates the views of Bengal on inheritance. In the following century Raghunandana wrote his twenty-eight treatises, *Tattvas*, which won special acceptance as regards ordeals, procedure, and inheritance. The seventeenth century saw the *Nirṇayasindhu* of Kamalākara, which is still a religious authority in the Marāṭha country, the *Bhagavantabhāskara* of Nīlakaṇṭha, and the encyclopaedic *Vīramitrodaya*² of Mitra Miçra who also commented on the *Mitākṣarā*, and whose work touches on astrology and medicine as well as the doctrine of emancipation.

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² Ed. Calcutta, 1893.

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³ Ed. BI. 1873–95.

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⁴ Ed. BI. 1893.

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⁵ *Vivādaratnākara*, ed. BI. 1887.

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⁶ *Vivādacintāmaṇi*, ed. Calcutta, 1837.

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¹ Ed. Calcutta, 1863–6; for date, see Keith, *Bodl. Cat.*, i, App., p. 89; for Vācaspati, p. 81

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² Ed. ChSS. 1906 ff.

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The works of these authors, meritorious in their own way, never exhibit the highest qualities of legal interpretation. They were bound to follow authority, and they fail to evolve any independence of attitude to that authority, or to do more than exhibit very considerable ability in reconciling the irreconcilable, and establishing the legitimacy of a custom of their district by torturing ancient texts which obviously meant something else. How far their citations were from really old authorities it is impossible to say; that verses were freely forged when it was impossible to check the process may be guessed, especially as the epic ranked as a high authority and no one then, or now, could assert definitely what was or was not contained therein.

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