The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s3.11

c7.s3.11

As the *Purāṇas* and the *Mahābhārata* as well as the *Rāmāyaṇa* have plenty of passages in common with the *Nīti-śāstras*, the Vedic ancestry of some of the ideas of this *Śāstra* literature is automatically assured. The Vedic atmosphere, be it understood carefully, is not however to be seen in the whole treatises of *Dharma*, *Artha* or *Nīti* but in certain passages only. It is not to be assumed, moreover, that the famous kings of the Vedic tradition were identical with those of the non-Vedic, extra-Vedic or post-Vedic tradition, or that the Vedic stories were reproduced *in toto* in the subsequent literature.⁸