A History of Sanskrit Literature c30.s3.1

c30.s3.1

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.'