Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.350

c7.350

The Dharmaratna of Jīmūtavāhana² seems to belong to the 15. century. The famous treatise on the law of inheritance popularly called the Dāyabhāga, the chief work of the Bengal school in this sphere, translated by Colebrooke, forms a part of this work. This work contains references only to ancient authors like Govindarāja, Jitendriya, Bhoja, Viśvarūpa, etc., but according to the commentators, the teachings of the above mentioned authorities of the Mithilā school, including Vācaspatimiśra, are criticised in it, so that—assuming this postulation to be correct—it could not have been written before the fifteenth century, but at the same time neither later, for an old Ms. of the Dharmaratna dates from the end of that century and this author is quoted already by Raghunandana. Jīmūtavāhana has been frequently commented upon,—an edition of his Dāyabhāga with 7 commentaries appeared in Calcutta in 1863-66. Yet however Ācāryacūḍāmaṇi, the oldest of these commentators, known also as a writer on the same subject, must be assigned to the 15. century, for he is already quoted by Raghunandana, and the same of Śulapāṇi (see § 11), whose Smṛtiviveka seems to have comprehended all the features of Dharma.