The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15.s2.1

c15.s2.1

Coming now towards the end of the present survey we have to observe that the specialized treatises or *śāstras*¹ on politics, economics and sociology in Hindu literature are numerous. To be very brief, they are to be encountered, generally speaking, under two groups: (1) *dharma* (and *smriti*) *śāstras* and (2) *artha* (and *nīti*) *śāstras*. As a full-fledged treatise, the oldest *dharmaśāstra* is perhaps the *Dharmasūtra* of Gautama (c 550 B.C. ?), and the oldest *arthaśāstra* perhaps that associated with the name of Kauṭalya (c 330 B.C. ?). Excluding the vernacular and English paraphrases or translations of the old Sanskrit treatises in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the last *smritiśāstra* of the Hindu tradition is perhaps the commentary on Vijnāneśvara's *Mitākṣarā* by the Maratha jurist Bālambhaṭṭa (1740-1830 ?) or the Bengali jurist Jagannātha Tarkapanchānana's (1695-1806 ?) *Vivāda-bhangārṇava*. And in the line of *nītiśāstras* the last work is perhaps the *Rājanīti*² in Marathi language (c 1810) based on Sanskrit texts by the Maratha scholar Malhār Rām Rāo Chitnis.