History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s5.18

v1.c6.s5.18

The foregoing discussion about the literature known to the Gautama Dh. S. and the authors and works that mention Gautama or quote the dharmasūtra helps us in arriving at the approximate age of the dharmasūtra. He is separated by a long interval from the Sāmavidhāna Brāhmaṇa. He is later than Yāska and wrote at a time when Pāṇini's system was either not in existence or had not attained a pre-eminent position. The extant text was known to Baudhāyana and Vasiṣṭha and was in the same state long before 700 A. D. The sūtra betrays no knowledge of the onslaught delivered on Brahmanism by Buddha and his followers. He uses the term Bhikṣu (3. 10) instead of the term parivrājaka that occurs in Baudhāyana, Āpastamba and other sūtra works and lays down that a *bhikṣu* is to stay in one place in the rains, which reminds one of the Buddhist ‘bhikkhu’ and ‘Vasso’. Gautama cites the opinion of some that Yavana is the offspring of a Kṣatriya male and a Śūdra female (4. 17). It is supposed by many scholars that the Yavanas became known to the Indians only at the time of Alexander's invasion and hence every work in which the word *yavana* occurs must be later than 320 B. C. Bühler (S. B. E. vol. II. Intro. lvi.) seems to suggest that the sūtra where the word Yavana occurs in Gautama may be an interpolation. This is not a satisfactory explanation. One may ask, if Bühler believes that the Indians borrowed their alphabet centuries before Alexander from the neighbours of the Greeks, why it is improbable that the Indians may not have heard of the word Yavana centuries before Alexander and why Yavanas may not have resided in India long before that date. Taking all these things into consideration the Gautama-dharmasūtra cannot be placed later than the period between 600-400 B. C.