Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c9.2.4

c9.2.4

The Dharma Sūtras and Śāstras, whatever weight might have been attached to them, could not be placed on any statute book. They grew up in the schools of those who were not only priests but also had a practical monopoly of the higher learning and were the repositories of legal lore. The exigencies of their composition and the dominance of caste explain the extraordinary “benefit of clergy” which they claim. This also explains one striking feature of the Sūtras as well as Śāstras—the system of penances. They view this life not as a whole in itself but as part of the life in past and future births. The sins committed by a person have to be expiated either here or in the long series of existences to come. Expiation may take the form of penances here. So for many actions two classes of punishments are given, or rather, a punishment to be inflicted by the secular power and a penance to be performed by the sinner voluntarily or forced on him by those who wish him well. The ‘sanctions,’ to use a modern term, are both civil and spiritual. It is sometimes difficult to say to which class a writer attaches greater importance. Gautama, for instance, lends colour to the hypothesis that a system of penances, voluntary and enforced, was the earliest Hindu way of promoting virtue and punishing sin, and that justice in the modern sense of the word was introduced only later.¹ Unfortunately, neither the Sūtras nor the Smṛitis throw much light on the origin of law and institutions;