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A History of Sanskrit Literature c30.s1: 1. The Origin of the Dharmaçāstras

A History of Sanskrit Literature c30.s1

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English

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.

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