Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.269

c7.269

§10. *The epic literature.* The two great epics, particularly the Mah., are often quoted as sources of law, exactly in the same manner as the Smṛtis, and in the quotations from the Mah. either the whole work or a particular Parvan or the Gītā (Bhagavadgītā) is mentioned. The close relation between the Mah. and the Smṛtis is illustrated even by the fact referred to in §8, that the extensive printed Smṛti of Vṛddha-Gautama originally formed a part of the Mah. and is often cited in the Dharmanibandhas as such. Also the Smṛtis of Viṣṇu, Bṛhaspati, Yama, etc., discussed in §8, may be considered to be remodellings or shorter episodes of the Mah. or allied works on account of their form and the addresses like *dvijaśreṣṭha* and various references to the heroes of the Mah. That the Mah., whose importance for the history of law will shine forth frequently in course of this treatise, must have possessed its present character of a colossal Smṛti already about 300-500 A. D.¹ has been proved by Bühler². Thus the verses regarding gifts have been quoted from the Mah., even from the fifth century onwards and in an inscription of the sixth century 100,000 Ślokas are ascribed to the Mah., so that, accordingly, already at that time, it had attained approximately its present bulk. At the time of Kumārila, i. e. in the eighth century, the Mah. was already essentially a didactic poem in which the old sagas figured only as connecting links. According to the united evidence of Bāṇa in the Kādambarī and an inscription from Kamboja, it used to be recited like the Rāmāyaṇa in the temples of India and Further India already about 600 A. D. for the edification of the faithful. Rāmāyaṇa has the character of a didactic poem even from the very beginning. Jacobi assigns the date of its composition to the period from the sixth to the eighth century B. C.¹