Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.433

c7.433

The results of the careful and laborious researches of Forchhammer who has enumerated more than 50 Dhammasats and Pyattons and described them as far as necessary, may so far be accepted without the slightest modification. The conclusions however drawn by him from the lack of any element in the oldest Burmese law-books which is connected with the Vedic and the Neo-Brahmanical cultures, are more disputable². The assumptions that animal sacrifice and other Brahmanical elements were added to Indian law-books at a comparatively modern period, and that the Burmese Dhammasats have risen out of an older recension of same, are refuted by the Dharmasūtras which prove the animal sacrifice and the entire Brahmanism to be the oldest element of the Smṛtis. Yet Forchhammer does not seem to have stuck to this opinion in his last and the most mature work, for in it he only combats the assumption that the oldest Burmese law-books are direct translations of Brahmanical works and derives them from a Buddhistic Manu or Mānava school which flourished in India in the 7.-9. centuries and from there reached the Tala-