History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v5.c71.s1.90.4

v5.c71.s1.90.4

Therefore when some writers include such contacts as eating or touching under 'karmaṇā' they put two meanings on the word *karman* in Parāśara viz. perpetration of a murder or the like and also doing some of the acts (touching, eating) which are forbidden to be done in reference to a perpetrator by some smṛtis. This is a procedure which is against the maxim of the Mīmāṁsā that the same word conveys only⁶⁴ one sense in the same context The reasonable inference from the words of Parāśara is that merely touching a *mahāpātakın* or eating food in his house did not involve the toucher and eater in *pātttya*. In spite of this medieval writers gradually extended the scope of saṁsarga in a spirit of exclusiveness and of over-emphasis on ideas of ceremonial purity - For example, the Smṛtyarthasāra⁶⁵ (p. 112) remarks that he who associates with the person that associates with a *mahāpātakın* has to undergo half the expiation that the first associator has to undergo. But that work does not go beyond this. The Mit. (on Yāj III. 261) appears to hold that the associator even though he does not become patita is liable to undergo expiation and that even the 4th and 5th associators in a series are liable to undergo expiation though it is lesser and lesser⁶⁶. The Pr. Prakaraṇa (p 109), Pr V. (pp 169-170) and the Pr T. (p 547) quote certain verses of Āpastamba and Vyāsa which very much widen the circle of *saṁsarga*. Āpastamba-smṛti⁶⁷ (III.