Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.90

c7.90

The small Smṛti of Kāśyapa² or Upakāśyapa deals at first in prose but afterwards is Ślokas, with the duties of the Gṛhastha, Acāra and Prāyaścitta. Yet this work may at best be but a sketch of the original Dharma-sūtra of Kāśyapa who is well-known as a Ṛṣi and a teacher of law, for he is frequently referred to as author of Ślokas and prose texts on the law of inheritance, pious gifts and other parts of the law, which are not found in this work. Atri, famous as a Ṛṣi and even quoted by M. 3, 16 as a teacher of law, is considered to be the author of various Smṛtis and one of them which is still unpublished,³ consisting of 9 Adhy., shows a mixture of prose and verse, e.g., Adhy. 1-3, 6 and 9 contain altogether 61 Ślokas while Adhy. 4 wholly and Adhy. 7 and 8 for the most part, are written in prose. Its contents exclusively deal with penance and expiation in this world and the next for various sins and transgressions and is mostly identical with the published Laghu-Atri, which however, contains a short prose section only in the fourth Adhy. and with the Vṛddha Atri¹ which has also been published and is closely related to the latter; only in the last named work I was able to trace a quotation occurring in the Dharmanibandhas (Mādh. 1, 432). Śātātapa (or Vṛddha-Ś., Bṛhacchātātapa) is referred to by Y. and Parāśara as a teacher of law and is often quoted by Hemādri, Vijñāneśvara and other mediaeval writers as the author of rules mostly in verse about penances, contamination, charitable gifts, alms, Śrāddha and other features of the sacred law. At least one of these quotations, in prose, concerning the penance for murdering a Brahman (Mit. on Y. 3, 243) occurs at the beginning of the Ms. described by Eggeling Cat. 3 No. 1362, which in 12 Adhy. deals with Vaiśvadeva and Śrāddha sacrifices, rules of diet, impurity and other religious questions in a mixture of prose and verses. Related with this Ś. is the Dharmaśāstra of the same author² (Ibid. No. 1361)—at first in prose but later on containing 139 verses. The Smṛti of Vṛddha-Ś. on the other hand is quite a different work consisting only of 63 verses and 2 prose passages, in which Mandlik (326) has found a quotation from this author in the Nirṇayasindhu.