A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c11.s2.5
A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c11.s2.5
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c11.s2.5
∗ The paucity of political ideas in the Purāṇas and the minor Smritis is explained partly at any rate by their nature and scope. The Purāṇas, as Prof. Bühler pointed out long ago (S. B. E. Vol. XXV, Preface, p. xci), are "popular sectarian compilations of mythology, philosophy, history and the sacred law, intended, as they are now used, for the instruction of the unlettered classes, including the upper divisions of the Śūdravarṇa, the so-called Sachchhudras." The minor Smritis, again, apart from the fact that they have come down to us mostly in a fragmentary form, are concerned in the main with the branches of civil and criminal law alone.