History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c93.386.1

v7.c93.386.1

According to the Pūrvamīmāṁsā Veda is eternal, self-existent and of absolute authority, one fails to understand how sages could have authority at the beginning of the Kali-yuga to prohibit what the Veda enjoined or permitted. This seems to be a fiction invented to accommodate as Dharma the changes in people's ideas and practices that had occurred. It would have been honest and straightforward if the writers on Dharmaśāstra had said that changed circumstances required that the words of the Veda or of the old smṛtis should not be followed. And there is nothing novel or revolutionary in saying this. Both Manu²⁰⁷¹ and Yājñavalkya prescribe that one should not observe but give up, what was (once) deemed to be dharma, if it had become hateful to the people and if it would end in unhappiness and not lead to the attainment of heaven. Even the Mitākṣarā follows this precept of the two smṛtis and expressly says that unequal distribution (at partition) of ancestral wealth, though found in the Śāstras, should not be followed because people had come to hate it. It may be noted that the word used by Yāj. and others is 'lokavidviṣṭa' or 'lokavikruṣṭa' (hated or reviled by the people) and not 'śiṣṭa-vidviṣṭa', the idea being that even if orthodox learned *paṇḍits* insist that people must follow what the Veda and smṛtis declare to be Dharma, common people may give up practices condemned by them or hateful to them.