Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.279

c7.279

For the consideration of the age and authenticity of the existing Purāṇas, this also is of great importance that a large portion of the quotations from them in the Dharmanibandhas may be traced in our Purāṇas. Thus V. S. Islampurkar has traced in the existing editions and Mss. of Kurma, Nṛsiṃha, Mārkaṇḍeya, Liṅga, Viṣṇu, Śaiva and Skandapurāṇas most of the quotations from them occurring in the first part of the Mādhavīya edited by him and at least some of the quotations from the Matsyapurāṇa. The same with the Purāṇa quotations of Hemādri. Still more important is the fact that Alberuni about 1000 A. D. was acquainted with a work essentially identical with the Kashmirian Viṣṇudharmottara, and he also knew that Brahmagupta had used the work already in 628 A. D.⁴ These religious works are of course less important for law proper excepting certain features of the family law and therefore will be mentioned but rarely in the following treatise. The Smṛtis themselves do not recognise the Purāṇic sources of law to be equally authoritative, rather in the case of a conflict between the teachings of the Smṛti and the Purāṇas, the former decides the issue⁵; but the authors of the Dharmanibandhas have little observed this maxim.