Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.130

c7.130

As the Mah. at the time of its revision was considerably extended in view of the advanced Brahmanism, so the Dharmasūtras too received a great deal of accretions. The narrow, exclusively religious standpoint of the Vedic schools permitted many important questions to be dealt with only by a hint, specially as the Sūtra-works were committed to memory and thus had to be as concise as possible and, as has already been pointed out, were from the first destined to supplement each other. On the other hand a work which was intended to be studied and recited by every member of the three higher castes (M. 2, 16 ; 12, 126), would have to go much more into details and include a much wider circle of subjects ². Thus an exhaustive treatment of law proper, which in the Dharmasūtras was treated rather in a step-motherly fashion, was necessary in such a work. In fact the juridical section i. e. the 8. and the first part of the 9. Adhy. covers more than one fourth of the whole of this extensive work (713 of 2684 verses) while in the Dharmasūtras they occupy comparatively much less space. Particular laws and maxims are illustrated by instances from the Mah. as has already been mentioned above.