Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.98

c7.98

Of the fragments of Dharmasūtras which are known only from solitary quotations, those on the whole may be regarded as the oldest which are referred to in other Dharmasūtras. Particular interest attaches to the ancient quotations from a Sūtra-work of Manu or the Mānavas², on account of their relation with the law-book of the same name. Thus a remarkable quotation from a Mānavam about the slaughter of animals is found in Vas. 4, 5-8. The passage, partly in prose and partly in verse, is exactly in the style af ancient Dharmasūtras and may have been derived from a Mānavam Dharmasūtram,³ supposedly the source of the Mānavam Dharmaśāstram, for the metrical portion of this quotation occurs in M. 5, 41, 48, only with this difference that in M. 5, 48 meat-eating is forbidden without exception in conformity with the later principle of ahiṃsā. The other quotations from M. in Vas. including the stereotyped *manurabravīt*, are in verse, and 6 of them are found in our M. word for word or with slight modifications, but 3 (Vas. 12, 16 ; 19, 37 ; 23, 43) cannot be traced in M. Leaving out Vas., the above mentioned passage (M. 5, 41) occurs also in the Śaṅkhā.-gṛhya 2,16, 1. Even Gaut. 21,7, refers to a prose M. as an authority for the maxim that the first three principal sins are inexpiable and our M. (11, 90-92, 104 f., 147) too teaches practically the same thing, for the penances prescribed there are equivalent to suicide. About the rather doubtful quotation from M. in the Dharmasūtra of Uśanas see above and p. 21, note 3. The two passages about the teachings of the Mānavāḥ in the Nitisāra of Kāmandaki 2, 3 and 7, 24 f. (=M. 7. 155-157) appear to be ancient, and the Mānavāḥ in it appear to be a Vedic school, though not yet generally recognised. More such references are found also in the latest of Smṛtis, e.g. in a quotation from Kātyāyana in Ratn. 332, where a view of the Mānavāḥ about the punishment for theft is quoted which approximately corresponds to our M. 9, 270.