History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s39.2

v1.c6.s39.2

Viśvarūpa quotes a few verses of Vyāsa. They are mostly taken from the Mahābhārata and are concerned with topics of marriage, daily duties (such as washing the teeth and bathing), śrāddha and prāyaścitta. Similarly Medhātithi quotes several verses from the Mahābhārata as Vyāsa’s. In Aparārka, the Smṛticandrikā and other works about two hundred verses of Vyāsa are cited on vyavahāra. From these it appears that Vyāsa dealt with rules of procedure and the several titles of law (vyavahāra-padas) and that his doctrines closely agreed in most respects with those of Nārada, Kātyāyana and Bṛhaspati. He gives rules on the four kinds of uttara (mithyā, sampratipatti, kāraṇa and prāṅ-nyāya), divides documents in three varieties (svahasta, jānapada, rājaśāsana), divides laukika documents into eight sub-varieties (just as Kātyāyana seems to have done); he closely follows Bṛhaspati in his requirements about royal grants and two of his verses about grants (ṣaṣṭiṁ varṣa &c. and sāmānyoyaṁ dharmasetur nṛpāṇām) occur very frequently in inscriptions (vide Aparārka on Yāj. I. 318). Vyāsa lays down that if a stranger enjoy a person’s land for twenty years when the king is there (i. e. when there is no revolution or anarchy) and when the owner is able (to resist) the latter loses his property.⁴⁷⁰ He speaks of adverse possession as having five characteristics.⁴⁷¹ He mentions seven kinds of sureties, while Hārīta and Kātyāyana speak of only five and Bṛhaspati of four. He speaks of only five kinds of ordeals. He defines a *niṣka* as equal to 14 suvarṇas, a suvarṇa being equal to eight palas.⁴⁷² Vyāsa seems to represent a middle stage in the evolution of the rights of the widow to succeed to her deceased husband. He says that a woman was to get a maximum of two thousand (kārṣāpaṇas) from the estate of her deceased husband⁴⁷³ (besides what he gave her when living). Vyāsa gave to the father and sons equal shares in ancestral property and allowed partition even against the wish of the father.⁴⁷⁴ From these important characteristics of Vyāsa it may safely be concluded that Vyāsa flourished about the same time as Yājñavalkya and Bṛhaspati, i. e. between the second and the fifth century.