A History of Sanskrit Literature c30.s1.14

c30.s1.14

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.