The History of Indian Literature c8.27

c8.27

The Smárta-Sútras, which led to this digression, generally exhibit the complete standpoint of Brahmanism. Whether in the form of actual records or of compositions orally transmitted, they in any case date from a period when more than men cared to lose of the Smriti—that precious tradition passed on from generation to generation—was in danger of perishing. Though, as we have just seen, it had undergone considerable modifications, even in the families who guarded it, through the influence of the Brahmans, yet this influence was chiefly exercised with reference to its political bearings, leaving domestic manners and customs¹¹ untouched in their ancient form; so that these works cover a rich treasure of ideas and conceptions of extreme antiquity. It is in them also that we have to look for the beginnings of the Hindú legal literature,¹² whose subject-matter, indeed, in part corresponds exactly to theirs, and whose authors bear for the most part the same names as those of the Grihya-Sútras. With the strictly legal portions of the law-books, those dealing with civil law, criminal law, and political law, we do not, it is true, find more than a few points of connection in these Sútras; but probably these branches were not codified at all until the pressure of actual imminent danger made it necessary to establish them on a secure foundation. The risk of their gradually dying out was, owing to the constant operation of the factors involved, not so great as in the case of domestic customs. But a far more real peril threatened them in the fierce assaults directed against the Brahmanical polity by the gradually increasing power of Buddhism. Buddhism originally proceeded purely from theoretical heterodoxy regarding the relation of matter to spirit, and similar questions; but in course of time it addressed itself to practical points of religion and worship, and thenceforth it imperilled the very existence of Brahmanism, since the military caste and the oppressed classes of the people generally availed themselves of its aid in order to throw off the overwhelming yoke of priestly domination. The statement of Megasthenes, that the Indians in his time administered law only ἀπὸ μνήμης, ‘from memory,’ I hold therefore to be perfectly correct, and I can see no grounds for the view that *μνήμη* is but a mistranslation of Smṛiti in the sense of Smṛiti-S’ástra, ‘a treatise on Smṛiti.’¹ For the above-mentioned reason, however—in consequence of the development of Buddhism into an anti-Brahmanical religion—the case may have altered soon afterwards, and a code, that of Manu, for example (founded on the Mánava Gṛihya-Sútra), may have been drawn up. But this work belongs not to the close of the Vedic, but to the beginning of the following period.