A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.8

c10.8

The above characteristic of the works that we are now considering, involving, that is, a synthesis of ideas is, we think, closely connected with the circumstances of their origin and their essential nature. The Manusamhitā, while based upon a lost Dharmasūtra work of the school of Manu, is distinguished from the latter by the fact that it is the product not of a Vedic school, but of one of the special law schools which took over at an early period the complete teaching of the Sacred Law\*. Hence it is able to develop in fuller detail those rules of civil law and public administration to which the authors of the Dharmasūtras had given the most perfunctory attention. The Mahābhārata, again, is unconnected with any school, and while belonging in form to the literature of heroic history (Itihāsa), it claimed and obtained early recognition as a work on the Sacred Law (Smriti or Dharmaśāstra) such as the Manusamhitā was†.