History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s12.12

v1.c6.s12.12

The dharmasūtra seems to have permitted *niyoga*, speaks of twelve secondary sons, and did not favour (like Āpastamba) the claims of females to succeed to males. On certain points the dharmasūtra of Śaṅkha marks a more advanced state of opinion than is the case with Gautama or Āpastamba. Śaṅkha speaks of several kinds of ordeals and appears to have contained elaborate prose rules about them (vide Aparārka on Yāj. II, 95; Smṛticandrikā II., p. 112, Vīramitrodaya, p. 270). As regards partition and inheritance, Śaṅkha-Likhita gives more detailed information than Āpastamba or Baudhāyana. The limits of Āryāvarta¹³⁸ stretched over wider areas according to Śaṅkha (i. e. to the east of Sindhu-Sauvīra and to the west of Kāmpilya) than is the case with Baudhāyana (I. 1. 25) or Vasiṣṭha (I. 8-9). The style of Śaṅkha reminds one of Kauṭilya rather than of Gautama. The quotations hardly exhibit any ungrammatical forms. It is noteworthy that Yājñavalkya is included among the authors of smṛtis by Śaṅkha (vide note 137 above). If it is the extant Yājñavalkya-smṛti that is meant to be referred to, then the dharmasūtra of Śaṅkha will have to be assigned to a late date. But this does not seem to be likely. From the fact that the Yājñavalkya-smṛti itself enumerates Śaṅkha-Likhita among ancient authors on *dharma*, from the general style of the work, from the development of the legal conceptions it presents and from its doctrines about the rights of women, it appears almost certain that the extant Yājñavalkya-smṛti is much later than the dharmasūtra of Śaṅkha. There are close correspondences between Śaṅkha and Yājñavalkya.¹³⁹