Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c9.8

c9.8

Many crimes in these lists appear to be disconcerting and almost phantastic and about some of the expressions used therein even the commentators are of divided opinion. Thus the crime of earning livelihood by means of the wife (M. 11, 64 etc.) is interpreted not only by the prostitution of the wife but also by the appropriation of her earnings or her own property or by the sale of the wife. On the whole there is no part of the Brahmanical codes of law whose roots reach so far into antiquity and which with all its peculiarities has maintained itself tenaciously up to the present day as the theory of crimes and the penances for those sins. The Sūryābhyudita and the Brahmahan, Bhrūṇahan, Parivitta, Didhiṣupati, Agredidhiṣu and other categories of sinners may be traced back even to the Vedic Saṃhitās (Kāṭh. 31, 5; AV 6, 112, 3 etc.)¹. The Taitt. Brāhm. 3, 2, 8, 11 ff. contains an enumeration of sinners which agrees almost literally with Āp. 2, 12, 22. Konow in his translation of the Sāmavidhāna-brāhmaṇa has pointed out many parallel passages out of the Smṛtis to the rules of atonement contained in it. Over and above those parallel passages I compare Sāmav. 1, 5, 6—9 (disrespectful conversation with Brahmans and relatives) with M. 11, 205, Y. 3, 292; 1, 5, 12 (smell of impure things) with Vi. 55, 8; 1, 8, 2 (sale of animals with two rows of incisors) with Vi. 45, 23, and 1, 8, 5 (forcibly carrying away a girl) with the Rākṣasa marriage of the Smṛtis. The deadly sins and the minor sins of the Smṛtis are mentioned also in the Mah. 12, 165, 34 ff. as well as in inscriptions e. g. EI 1, 366, 39 (gohatyābrahmahatyādi mahāpātakam). The Buddhist lists of sins exhibit many points of agreement with the Smṛtis².