History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s21.14.1

v1.c6.s21.14.1

The Agnipurāṇa affords an excellent check for the consideration of the text of the Yājñavalkyasmṛti. A good-sized monograph will be required to deal exhaustively with the questions raised by the comparison of the vyavahāra portion of the Agnipurāṇa with Yājñavalkya's vyavahāra-kāṇḍa. I shall only briefly examine the materials and state the conclusions at which I have arrived. We know that Viśvarūpa, the first extant commentator of Yāj., flourished about 800-825 A. D. The author of the Mitākṣarā flourished about 250 years later. Interesting results follow by a comparison of the text that these two commentators had before them with the Agnipurāṇa. I shall select chap. 256 of the Agnipurāṇa for a detailed examination. It contains 36 verses which all occur in Yāj. II. (verses 118-153 of Tri. ed. and verses 114-149 of the Mit. ). It is found that the Agnipurāṇa agrees with the text of 12 verses word for word as contained in Viśvarūpa and 19 verses as contained in the Mit. Viśvarūpa puts three verses between the two verses ‘pitṛdravyāvināśena &c’ and ‘kramādabhyāgataṁ dravyaṁ’, while the Mit. brings the two verses together. Agnipurāṇa agrees with Viś. In several cases the readings of the Agnipurāṇa agree with Viśvarūpa’s text and not with that of the Mit. For example, Agni. reads ‘kāryāḥ patnyaḥ samāṁśikāḥ’ with Viś. (119), reads ‘bhūryā . . . dravyam-eva vā . . . putrasya cobhayoḥ’ with Viś. (124), reads ‘pitṛdravyāvināśena’ (and not ‘°vyāvirodhena’ as Mit. does) with Viś.