History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s99: 114. Conclusion

v1.c6.s99.1

In the foregoing pages most of the classical works and the most prominent writers on Dharmaśāstra during a period of about twenty five centuries have been passed in review. The number of authors and works on dharmaśāstra is legion. All these numberless authors and works were actuated by the most laudable motives of regulating the Aryan society in all matters, civil, religious and moral, and of sub-divisions and also of thinking that religious rites and formularies were the be-all and end-all of human existence. But living as most of the later writers did in the midst of aggressive and violently unsympathetic cultures and rulers and possessing no powerful central government that sympathised with their ideals, they were driven more and more to revolve within their own narrow grooves and could not see far in order to regulate society in a free and buoyant spirit. In spite of these defects, the work done by the writers on dharmaśāstra should excite our admiration and entitles them to the regard of all those that are interested in the study of the vicissitudes of Hindu society for thousands of years.