The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c8.3

c8.3

After the Brâhmaṇas and the earlier Upaniṣads, the Sûtras stand out as the next important class of literature. In ancient India learning was generally cultivated in schools and the results arrived at were given the stamp of schools which were often attached to various Vedic sects. Such schools seem to have arisen all over the country by the sixth or fifth century B.C. By this time the Âryans had overspread the whole of northern India and penetrated far into the south. The wider their geographical distribution, the greater were the differences of doctrine, law, custom and ceremonial among them. The Sûtras, though agreeing in certain fundamentals, display innumerable differences of detail. The ‘threads,’ as the term means, are extremely thin. They represent the very acme of concision which too often renders them obscure and dreary. Nevertheless, they do in a large measure simplify and systematise the complicated theology and ritual of the Brâhmaṇas. Broadly speaking, they fall into three classes, or rather aspects, the Śrauta, Gṛihya and Dharma—the sacrificial, domestic and legal. A complete collection, a Kalpa Sûtra, should comprise all the three but many of them have perished and, generally, each body of Sûtra stands independent of others. Their fundamental object is the same—the regulation of human life. Their full and detailed instructions show the great place which authority occupied in the direction of the Hindu mind. In general, they fall between the sixth and second centuries before Christ but the exact date of each can not be determined. Bühler placed the Dharma Sûtras, which from our point of view are the most important, between the sixth and third centuries B.C. and formulated a chronological order—Gautama, Baudhâyana, Vasiṣṭha and Âpastamba. Jolly assigns Gautama and Baudhâyana to the sixth or fifth century B.C., and Vasiṣṭha and Âpastamba to the fifth or fourth century B.C. Jayaswal would attribute the first forms of the Sûtras to about 500 B.C., but in their present shape he would place Gautama at 350 B.C., Baudhâyana at 240 B.C. and Vasiṣṭha at 100 B.C. Hopkins thinks that “probably the Grihyas represent the earlier Sûtras; the Dharmas as a whole come later, perhaps 300 B.C. would represent the earliest.” Âpastamba, he concludes, “probably is not older than the second century B.C.,” while Vasiṣṭha is even later. It is again probable that many of the Sûtras were recast subsequently, and that their text has been frequently tampered with to bring them into harmony with the later Dharma Śâstras. Gautama, in fact, is known as a Dharma Śâstra. Only roughly can the Sûtras be held to reflect the life of the period from 500 to 100 B.C. during which they arose. It will be a mistake to compare the Dharma Sûtras or the later Dharma Śâstras, as Sir William Jones compared Manu, to the Institutes of Justinian. The Hindu texts do not embody any system of positive law and represent no real system of jurisprudence. They are manuals of conduct, of ideal morality or law. Besides, they are pre-eminently the product of priestly brains and tend to look at life from a narrow standpoint.