SCHRIFTENREIHE DES SDASIEN-INSTITUTSDER

UNIVERSITT HEIDELBERG

BAND 18

FRANZ STEINER VERLAG GMBH WIESBADEN1975

BHARUCrS COMMENTARYON THE

MANUSMRTI(THE MANU-SSTRA-VIVARANA, BOOKS 6-12)

TEXT, TRANSLATION AND NOTES

VOL.1THE TEXT

EDITED BY

J. DUNCAN M. DERRETT

FRANZ STEINER VERLAG GMBH WIESBADEN1975

ISISN 3-515-01858-1

Alle Rechte vorbehaltenOhne ausdrckliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es auch nicht gestattet, dasWerk oder einzelne Teile daraus nachzudrucken oder auf photomechanischemWege (Photokopie, Mikrokopie usw.) zu vervielfltigen. 1975 by FranzSteiner Verlag GmbH, Wiesbaden. Schreibsatz Dorothea Sntgen, Bonn,

Druck: Wolf, HeppenheimPrinted in Germany.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Abbreviations and Bibliographical Note

Introduction 1

Works such as these 1The Identity of Bharuci 4The Date of Bharuci 9Bharuci1s place in studies of Manu 17Bhiruci and the art of interpretation 22Bharuci1s text of the smrti 27Conventions in this edition 34

Bharuci1s Commentary on the Manu-smrti 37

Appendix I. Index of Citations and Allusions 293

Appendix II. Index of Maxims^ 295

Appendix III. Readings peculiar to Bhiruci 296

Addenda et Corrigenda 308

Index of Sanskrit Words 310

Index of Names and Topics

PREFACE

The genesis of this edition

When going through the late Professor T.R.Chintamani's andDr. (now Professor) V.Raghavan1s contribution to the first edi-tion of K.A.Nilakanta Sastri's History of South India1 I noticeda reference to the commentary of Bhiruci on the Mlnava-dharma-slstra. Raghavan regarded Bhiruci as a South Indian author. Heseems to have had, in fact, access to scholarly traditions not

2confined to the South , but a southerner he could well have been,I asked Professor Raghavan for details and he referred me toChintamanis contribution to the Proceedings of the Twelfth AllIndia Oriental Conference. No one else had inspected Bhiruci inmodern times.

It has long been known that Bhruci was an important authorin the field of dharmasistra, the "science of righteousness",which includes ancient Indian conceptions of cosmogony, aetiolo-gy, eschatology (in so far as that term is appropriate), and,within that framework, sociology and jurisprudence. Bhruci isreferred to by first-class authors, amongst them Vijnanevara,whose Rju-mitlksarl is still a standard work of legal reference.Bhiruci is extensively referred to by the author(s) of Pratlpa-Rudra!s Sarasvatl-villsa, a work noted, indeed, for its pedantrybut also important for its practical information. Pandurang V.Kane, the greatest authority on dharmasistra, whose giganticHistory of Dharmasistra is monumental if not exhaustive, na-

1 Oxford University Press, Madras, 1955, 3442 See below, p. 323 (1943-4) Benares, II, 352-604 Guramma v. Mallappa, All India Reporter 1964 Supreme Court

510; Saraswathi Ammal v. Anantha Shenoi, Kerala Law Times1965, 141; V.D.Dhanwatey v. Comm., I.TV Madhya Pradesh,A.I.R. 1968 S.C. 683 (the comm. on_Yaj. II. 115-120 isreprinted at p. 688, col. 1). Vijanesvara cites Bhiruci(on niyamas) at I. 81.

turally devotes a chapter in his first volume5 to Bhiruci. Torecover anything of that author would be important.

Professor Raghavan recommended me to "take it up" for publi-cation, a remarkable thing for him to do. Manu is a work ofencyclopedic proportions, dealing, in the abstruse and allusiveway proper to the sistric author, with topics as varied as super-sensory merit and future rebirths, the intricacies of Simkhya andYoga philosophy, the contradictory traditions of civil andcriminal law, and such highly practical questions as liabilityfor road accidents. A.E.Housman, in his Cambridge inaugurallecture (9 May 1911) said:

Many a good piece of work has been spoilt by the vain passionfor completeness. A scholar designs to edit a certain author,a complete edition of whom would involve the treatment of mattersto whose study the editor has not been led by his own tastesand interests, and in which he therefore is not at home. Theauthor discourses of philosophy, and the editor is no philosopher... It then sometimes happens that the editor, having neitherthe humility to acknowledge his deficiency nor the industry orcapacity to repair it, scrapes a perfunctory acquaintance withthe unfamiliar subject, and treats it incompetently rather thannot treat it at all: so that his work, for the sake of osten-sible completeness, is disfigured with puerile errors, and hehimself is detected, not merely in ignorance, but in imposture.

To make matters worse, there is no edition so hard as that whichis based upon a single manuscript. And in this case we have amanuscript subjected to all the ills which can befall such aproduct, besides that of turning out to be unique in the truesense of that word. Worse still, this is the earliest author inthe tradition whose work has survived. One who edits a mediaevalauthor, whose predecessors as well as successors are available(whether in manuscript or in print) has at least the advantageof knowing what his author had in front of him, what he is like-ly to have meant, and what others subsequent ly took him to havemeant. They may be wrong, but at least their notions will be asgood as his own (to put it no higher). The shade of Housman may

5 P.V.Kane, History of Dharmasistra, I (Poona, 1930), sec.61,pp. 264-6. Similar information appears at the same author1s"The predecessors of Vijnanesvara", Journal of the Bombay Branchof the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S.,I (1925), 193 ff., at 209-213. Kane omits matters of importance, such as are referred toin his third volume (1946), and indeed others (e.g. referencesat pp.11,14 of the Sarasvatl-vilisa) which claimed attention.Jolly1s reference to "Bhlraruchi" at his Tagore Law Lectures(Outlines of a History of the Hindu Law of Partition,

be somewhat quieted to learn that I have not attempted to explainall my author's references (e.g. to the purusa-medha.)but evenHousman never attempted what I have done.

Optimism alone would not have sufficed to inspire me to takeup the challenging offer. My own shortcomings I was then no lessready to overlook than I am now. But I owe a personal debt toIndia which no amount of discouragement from elsewhere canefface. And "Manu" (whoever that anonymous scholar was who ex-ploited the prestige long attached to a venerable name) not onlyconstitutes India1s greatest achievement in the field of juris-prudence, but also represents one of the world's premier compo-sitions in ancient law, more valuable in every sense thanHammurabi and able to hold its own in comparison with the Coven-ant and Priestly Codes of "Moses". Manu's influence was directlyfelt in countries far to the East of India, and the body of lit-erature to which it belongs is a monument of sociology and lawwhich is uniquely comprehensive and continuous. Unnecessary andinappropriate encomia emanating from India in recent decades,while they add nothing to Manu's stature, do nothing to diminishhis real merits. I have contended elsewhere0 that the continuityof Indian thought is much greater than it would appear on thesurface: it is the special balance of forces and doctrines whichmakes Hinduism what it is, and will make and remake it for thefuture, and that balance is* evidenced for a very early periodin Manu. Further, it was clear from what Chintamani had discover-ed from the manuscript, and from Medhitithi, that the latter, acommentator on Manu^, had Bhiruci before him. My admiration for

Inheritance and Adoption'..., Calcutta, 1885), 143, is a slip,as his reference at Hindu Law and Custom (Calcutta, 1928), 71,shows (at Z.D.M.G. 47, 1893, 616 he refers to Bhir. proposof Stenzler's "Collectaneen"). Now see Kane,op.cit.,I(2d ed.)

6 Religion, Law and the State in India (London, 1968);"Tract!?ion'in Modern India: The Evidence of Indian Law", in R.L.Park,ed., Change and the Persistence of Tradition in IndiaFiveLectures, Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, No. 2U971), 17-34.

7 Ganganatha Jha, Manu-smrti. Notes. Part IIIt Comparative (Cal-cutta, 1929). Derrett, "Te concept of law according toMedhitithi, a pre-Islamic Indian jurist", in W.Hoenerbach, ed.,Der Orient in der Forschung. Festschrift Otto Spies (Wiesbaden,1967), 18-41. Medhtithi is often cited in Anglo-Hindu lawcases, e.g. Kasubai v. Bhagwan, Indian Lav; Reports, 1955,Nagpur 281 (Full Bench). See Kane,op.cit. ,I(2d ed.) sec.64.

Medhitithi is boundless, and anything which would serve to thlight on him must, I felt, be advantageous. So I sent for a ci.of the manuscript which lay in the University library at Tri-vandrum. Its number v/as L. 320. It comprised 144 leaves con-taining approximately 6,000 granthas.

The state of the manuscriptI asked for the copy to be made with especial care. I did

not confine myself to asking (as is conventional) for the fly-smudges to be reproduced. I asked that every space should beclearly indicated, and that wherever the copyist felt that themanuscript was wrong he should first copy what he saw and thenadd in brackets his own conjecture. The result was not entirelywhat I had expected, but it is still a gem amongst copies, anda monument of the modern copyist's art. a The copyist suspectedin innumerable places that the manuscript could not be right,but in every case he showed his doubts modestly; he was wrongin about three instances out of every five.

I had not anticipated that the task would be so very diffi-cult. The manuscript seems to have been the second half of asubstantial commentary on Manu once separated for convenienceinto two halves. The introductory leaf had gone, the top side ofthe first leaf was illegible, and the bottom leaf had lost theprotection of the blank leaves it must once have known. Theleaves are of course palm-leaves. In some regions of the textthe ends are broken, leaving gaps at the end of each line; inanother region similar damage has occurred at the other end.There is further damage at the string-holes. The age of themanuscript cannot be fixed, but the script is an old Malayalamscript and a date circa A.D. 1700 would be conservative. That isold for palm-leaf. The script is on the whole clear, but occa-sional compounds give trouble. The punctuation is useless-either it is unnecessary or it is wrong. The leaves are number-ed in the ancient method: Sri (1), na (1a), nna (2), nya (3),skra (4), jhra (5), hi (6), gra(7), pra (8), dre (9), ma (10),tha (20), la (30), pta (40), ba (50), tra (60), tru (70), cha(80), na (90) and a (100). Numerical symbols masquerading assyllables take us back to the time before the zero was imported

7a This manuscript is deposited in the Library of the School ofOriental and African Studies, London. A xerox copy of Books8-12 is available at the Adyar Library (Madras).

from China (before the seventh century); the method survived lora long time as a means of numbering the leaves of manuscripts.

Sri Soornad Kunjan Pillai, the then Honorary Director of theUniversity of Travancore Manuscripts Library, felt that a specialrate should be quoted for the task. The work was entrusted toPt.N.Sundara Sistr, and his copy was compared by Pt.N.Parameswa-ra Sistr. Corrections at this stage were made in red ink. Inthe course of making the copy it was felt desirable to consulta printed copy of Manu. This could have been disastrous. Thecopyist put the vulgate text of Manu, with the commentary ofKullka (probably the Nirnayasigara Press edition) up in frontof him, and then found that Bhiruci!s Manu diverged from thisconstantly! He often records his surprise. I have had to scruti-nise most carefully the readings of the smrti itself, and wher-ever I found that Bhiruci!s commentary presupposed a differentreading I have not been slow to restore that reading rather thanthe one which the copyist was persuaded he saw before him. Thereis one curious case where for long I felt that the copyist'seye should be trusted even though Bhiruci reads something elsein the commentary, because there is no certainty that, by over-sight, Bhiruci might not have allowed an alternative reading tostand in his text, of which he was fully aware. Or a latercopyist made the same mistake that I was willing to attributeto my copyist. *

The manuscript does not number the verses. Since the orderdoes not agree with any printed edition of Manu I have beenforced to adopt Bhiruci1s order, and print the vulgate numberingas a superior numeral. My copyist very properly inserted thenumbers in pencil. He also inserted in pencil all the missingsyllables in the smrti where this was illegible. Naturally whathe inserted was the vulgate text, and I have treated this withthe appropriate reserve. In many places my copyist inserted inpencil, above dots, the syllables he could not certainly read,but which he reasonably conjectured. This process, intermediatebetween recording the plain reading and simply indicating anillegible passage, frequently provided satisfactory material. Inthe xerox copy of Books 8-12 which I left at Adyar it is notpossible to distinguish pencil from ink markings - a warningwhich might be useful for any who choose to consult that copy.

The manuscript reveals a minor amount of confusion. Some lea-ves of a previous copy were out of order and miscopied accord-

ingly. This was easy to set right. Apart from the defectsmentioned, the manuscript is in fairly good condition. I haveseen at least as much in the way of error in works written inthe eighteenth century. True, the Vedic citations are in poorshape, but that is usually the case. Where the matter is techni-cal the ancient copyists (who were often poor hacks) frequent-ly went wrong. But surprisingly often this manuscript preservesexcellent readings, and what seemed at first sight to begibberish has not seldom turned out to make good sense.

The making of this edition and its motiveMy heart sank when (in 1957) I saw the number of gaps in the

text. I was also (foolishly) sorry to see that Bhiruci1scomments were much shorter than Medhitithi! s. I feared I hada work of small value on my hands. I looked up occasionalverses for research students, and left the beautiful devanagarlcopy on my shelf. I aimed to do no more, ultimately, than printthe text so that Indologists could make what sense of it theycould, but my attempts to make out the meaning were baffled bythe obsolete words, evident flaws in the text, and citationswhich I could not recognise. A comparison of Bhiruci with othercommentators on Manu (handily printed, in most cases, in V.N.Mandlik's monumental edition) showed that what I had was un-known to all of them, except Medhlt i thi (the case of 10.71a ismost illuminating), and Medhatithi1 s use of Bhiruci was quaint.My optimism ebbed away.

Q

Bhiruci had been totally lost for four centuries , and wasscarcely available for study for many more than that: but notfor ever. In spite of my own handicaps something favoured hispublication. I met Pt.K.Paramesvara Aithai in January 1964. Hehad tinkered with an attempt of mine to publish a work ofnavya-nyiya on Marriage. I knew the young pandit and I wouldwork together easily, and that the Manu-sistra-vivarana couldsee the light of day. Moreover Professor Ludo Rocher (then atBrussels) recognised that there was more in Bhiruci than metthe eye, and suggested a possible avenue for publication (thebook was advertised, but University contretemps frustrated8 Manava-Dharma Sastra (Institutesof Manu) with the Commen-taries of Medhatithit Sarvajanarayana, Kulluka, Raghavanan-da, Nandana, and Rmachandra .... 2 vQls. (Bombay, 1886).

9 For SudarsanScSrya see below, p. 8 n. 31. See also p.14 n.49below. The failure of the commentators upon Manu (apart from

those plans). The need for reliable native information in nativelaws, instead of the potted and patronising productions ofEuropeans, is now universally recognised in the intellectualworld. The East must be allowed to speak with her own voice,however difficult it may turn out to be to understand it. Adequa-te translations are essential; and the conception of what isadequate has undergone a change. A comparison of the existingtranslations of Manu shows how far we are from a definitivetranslation. Uncertainty encourages lethargy. The counsel ofperfection, that all students of India should learn Sanskrit,is unrealistic. Yet, on the other hand, an elementary knowledgeof Sanskrit is more readily achieved, and is more widespread,than ever it was. The purpose of this edition is to place inthe hands of both the non-Indologist sociologist and the non-Indologist lawyer, especially the historian of jurisprudence,a short and comprehensive work used, some time in the seventhcentury of our era (if not earlier), for what we might callpost-graduate training. Indologists too will find it useful. Itwill throw a flood of light on Medhitithi, and make a distinctcontribution to the study of Kau^ilya, as T.R.Trautmann hasalready shown.1Oa My prime aim, however, is to enable youngerscholars, whether or not they have a smattering of Sanskrit,to hear the authentic voice of the Hindu jurist, untouched byforeign influence, explaining..^ a principal textbook of hisculture. Bhiruci is short, but he can be a reliable guide sincehe catches up a large scope of learning and teaches what is,in substance, still the dharmasistra. Specialists of our ownday (lamentably few) will not accept all his ideas, for someare dpass. But these divergencies are scarce, and not ofmajor significance.

Medhitithi) to use Bhr. speaks for his availability havingbeen extremely limited even six centuries ago.

10 W.Jones (1794, 1796; trans. J.C.Httner, 1797); W.Jones andG.C.Haughton (1825, 1869, 1888); A.Loiseleur-Deslongchamps(Paris, 1830, 1833, etc.); thence via G.Pauthier's LivresSacrs into Portuguese by the Visconde de Rib Tarnega (1859);A.C.Burneil and E.W.Hopkins (London, 1884); G.Bhler, SacredBooks of the East ser., 25 (Oxford, 1886); G.Strehly (Paris,1893);S.D.Elmanovich (St.Petersburg, 1913); G.Jha (withMedhitithi) (Calcutta, 1920-9). Two Japanese translationshave come to my notice: that (1952) of Gishyo Nakano, thetranslator of Gautama, Yijavalkya and Kau-filya, and that ofS.Tanabe (1953).

10a T.R. Traut mann, Kautilya and the Arthasistra (Leiden, 1971),ch. 6. c '

Of course I had to publish a translation. This exposed memercilessly. But it shows how I read the text. Where I was notsure of the meaning I inserted a question-mark. To assist thetiro (and who is not a tiro in this field, if I may excludeless than half a dozen personal friends and colleagues?), I havepreferred a bald, flat style. Let it be understood that I haverepudiated the "principles" of Benjamin Jowett (Preface toPlato's Dialogues, 1875), for my translation exists to enablethe reader to understand the text. A lame and dry script oftenresults. I do not by any means presume, as Jowett did, the ex-istence of a vast public already able in some sort to translatethe original for themselves. Bharuci's deceptively easy Sanskritis full of pitfalls for the exegete. But I trust that my Englishis not unreadable.

My translation of Manu1s own verses differs from all previoustranslations in that it deliberately eschews style, and attemptsto be literal to a fault. The order of words, which is farmore important than many realise, is preserved as often aspossible, especially where the drift of the verse depends onthe order. The occasional baldness and bad writing of Manu appearnow for the first time. Manu was a poor versifier. I attributeto him the awkward and the coarse passages, and the beautifuland apt I attribute to his predecessors whose material he adoptsand edits.

I wondered at first what to do when the drift of Manudiffered from the drift Bhlruci read into him. This is no newproblem. The classical translators usually follow the plan,traditional since Sir William Jones, of translating so as toincorporate into the text the meanings attributed to it by thecommentators (which sometimes meant a selection, not seldom withuneven results). I have experimented with a new technique, namelyto put myself into the place of Bhiruci's pupils. I try to trans-late Manu1s slokas in a manner which does not inevitablypresuppose the commentary - and then Bhlruci1s commentary follows,so that the contribution of the commentator is clear. I think itis the interplay between the smrti and the vivarana which isilluminating and previous translations would not allow this muchscope. However, there are cases where Bhiruci's reading of thesrarti is peculiar and the commentary would have been stulti-fied had I ignored it when translating the text, and theseremain exceptions.

Much of the lameness and dullness of my translation is ofcourse due to Bhiruci himself. The Sanskrit he used was a form-less vehicle for thoughts born in a self-contained intellectualmilieu, in which bare references and allusions were enough tocomprehend a number of ideas. The want of inflections, theloose employment of compound words, and the infantile use ofparticles produce an unpalatable style containing traps for anewcomer. Bhiruci wrote for men who already knew the basic textsby heart. No dharmasistra writer wrote for the use of foreigners.The more cramped the style the shorter the book, and the greaterthe chance that it would be copied out by successive generationsof scribes.

If I had added an explanation of every difficult term, andexpanded every reference, only those would thank me who did nothave to pay for the volumes. And I think there is no merit inregurgitating what others have already digested. The studenthas Kane, and I have aimed merely to put him on the track tosolving problems that might annoy him. May I add a few hints,which the newcomer may take in the spirit in which they areproffered?

Have a translation of the whole of Manu near at hand.Although Burnell's is often better than Bhler!s it is thelatter who is most widely available. I often refer to books ofManu lost from Bhiruci1s manuscript. The thread of the discoursewould be lost if citations are Hot looked up. Remember thatMahamahopadhyaya Dr. Sir Ganganatha Jha*s text of Medhatithiis the best we have. His translation is the only English one wehave. One must remember that it is often guess-work and isfrequently unreliable. Jha himself has often been appreciatedfor his dharmasistra work , but he could make a perfect foolof himself in the witness-box when questioned on his transla-

12tions. Cold comfort for one who treads the same path!Do not suppose me at fault when I show Bhiruci recommending

a course or propounding a rule which does not form a part ofdharmasastra as known today: Bhiruci was a very early commenta-tor, and some of his opinions are antiquated and some are not

11 For example, Ram Khelawan v. Lakshmi (19^9) Indian Law Re-ports, 28 Patna, 1008, at pp. 1C17-8. See also Rakhalra.1 v.Debendra A.I.R. 1948 Cal. 356.

12 Srimati Sabitri Thakurain v. Mrs.F.A.Savi (1932) Indian LawReports, 12 Patna, 359. See pp. 436-7, ^99, 501.

documented elsewhere. Do not suppose that any dharmaslstra ruleis "law" in the modern sense. As R.Lingat has explained neatly ,it was something on its way towards being law - it was often morein practice, and more often less. My Introduction should certain-ly be read before one plunges into the text, especially thatpart which deals with interpretation. One should also rememberthat each verse is influenced by its section, and each sectionby its book. Harm can be done by citing a verse out of context.It is a great pity we do not have Bhiruci entire. An example ofthe errors into which historians can fall by citing isolatedverses (a constant temptation) should drive the warning home.

Nirada, speaking of property and endowments, and of the king,says (XVIII.46) "as gold, on being thrown into blazing fire,acquires purity, even so all gains become pure in the hands ofkings." Two able scholars independently cited this to show thatthe dharmasastra, for all its concern that kings should behaverighteously towards their subjects, really condoned malpracticesincluding extortion. But when we turn to the context we see thatwhat Nirada was discussing was "pure" and "impure" wealth. Pro-perty acquired a ritual quality dependent upon the morality ofits acquisition. Ill-gotten gains were tainted, inauspicious.Brahmins concerned for their ritual purity, with which wasassociated their social status, and their capacity, in turn, toreceive benefactions from merit-worthy donors, must abstain fromunrighteous appropriation and from accepting presents formtainted sources. Nrada explains that there is a presumptionthat a king's gains are pure, and the presumption stands uponthat king1s general reputation for doing his duty. It is clearthath the verse relates to the anxiety which scrupulous Brahminsshould feel when about to accept donations from kings. It hasnothing to do with the norms bearing upon the king's acquisitionas such. If he broke those the presumption would be rebutted,and our verse would not come into play. If those scholars hadread the context they would not have made that mistake.

AcknowledgementsPandit K.Paramesvara Ai thai comes from the South Kanara

district, which enjoys a reputation for a high level of education

13 Les Sources du Droit dans le Systme traditionnel de l'Inde(Paris, 1967). An English version, entitled The ClassicalLaw of India appeared from the University of CaliforniaPress in 1973.

and a culture of great continuity (because of geographical semi-isolation) . He learnt Sanskrit and the feistras as the youngerson of a purohit family still in practice as their ancestors had"been from the remote past. He was trained by a Somayj in theold-fashioned way. When he came to Mysore he could not read theEnglish street-names. In a way which, in any other country,would be regarded as miraculous he took the degrees of B.A. andM.A. at Mysore University, over and above various honours as aPandit. He subsequently became a Ph.D. When I met' him he wasemployed in the Adyar Library, editing texts. The Adyar Libraryhas one of the best Indological collections, beautifullymaintained. I was at Adyar from October 1965 "to January 1966.The Pandit1s sense of humour sustained me while, after making noconcessions to the climate or vegetable diet or other unexpectedfeatures of that abode, I worked from morning till night on atext the study of which had perforce to be completed to schedule.My method was to copy out the text from a xerox copy of booksEight to Twelve, i.e. the greater part of the material. This Ithen translated at the rate of twenty slokas a day. I recordthis, not to make a permanent record of my will-power, but toshow that at that stage I concentrated entirely on the text verseby verse, and did not soak myself in the work as a whole. Pt.Aithai was in a position to attempt this latter, and took thexerox sheets and pondered on them at leisure. With greatdiffidence he suggested changes \n the text. We soon discovered(to my joy.) that the gaps had been systematically enlarged bythe copyist by 100 %. The Pandit removed grammatical and spellingerrors which would have,delayed me. He tried his hand at fillingthe gaps, where this could be done with confidence; often hefound it possible to read straight across them, whereas anothermethod (I discovered later) would have been more successful,though much less handy. I had already decided to print the textin such a way that it would be obvious at a glance what syllablesI myself (with the Pandits occasional aid) had supplied.

I worked in this fashion seven days a week. Pt.Aithal correctedthe xerox sheets, and from them I made a copy in Roman; I trans-lated this during, the day into books of account-book size, leav-ing one side blank for comments, queries and complaints. In theevening and night time the Pandit read my translation andcorrected it (in coloured ink). I cannot say how many slips orhowlers he detected, bu+ I am under the impression these were

never fewer than two to the page. My sight was often poor andmy spirits low (I have never done a more tedious or exactingtask) ; the Pandit talked to me of the subject-matter, of hisvillage, of the world from which he came, in which in factBhiruci would be still meaningful. He himself, for example, hadperformed spells referred to by Bhiruci. Things that puzzledeeply-read Sanskritists were no problem to him. He helped meat every step: but I retained the merit (for what it is worth)of exploring every word myself, and attempting the translationindependently. A good deal of what I did was more useful thanI then knew; read rapidly, the greater part of the translationmade excellent sense, whereas stepping at the time from sentenceto sentence I often wondered where I was. It is very common forEuropean Sanskritists to pay pandits a small sum and get themto translate texts which their employers copy down more or lessverbatim: had I lacked the shame, the circumstances of the casev/ere such that that trick could not have been played withBhiruci.The reader will have already grasped that I had the task of

settling the text and the translation simultaneously, and fromone manuscript. Even the most accomplished Sanskritist has noharder task.Bhiruci1s punctuation being obscure, and his text cramped, I

was often in doubt how to proceed. The author appeared to cont-radict himself often. I put in, or took out, the word na ("not")or the equivalent, from time to time. The Sanskritist will bearme out that this must frequently be done! At first I fanciedMedhitithi would help. But Pt.Aithai and I soon discovered thatMedhitithi, though he possessed Bhiruci as he possessed othercommentaries on Manu, treated him freely, and misunderstood

13ahim. ' Several times Pt. Ai thai corrected the text and I havemyself de-corrected and restored the manuscript reading, Itrust to no ill effect. In several places (e.g. silidau at10.71) my copyist had doubted the text, and my colleague usedhis blue pencil too freely. It is possible thatt had the Panditand I been more rash, we might have restored the text more acc-urately. Both East and West have bold spirits who say, "ofcourse he must have written so-and-so!", in more or less scorn-ful tones. But I believe one should not depart from the manu-script even if one strongly suspects that it is wrong, unless

13a Instances are given, and others are referred to, below.

evidence for this is conclusive. In hundreds of cases we couldhave written what we think is better Sanskrit than our author;but we are not entitled to intrude upon him with ideas whichare above the station of a mere editor or translator. It wasnot my task to make Bhiruci more sensible, more accurate, ormore aesthetic than he was.

After my return to England I again consulted Pt.Aithai bypost about citations and otherwise. Several obscure citations,which I might never have found, were successfully located byhim. I sent him a copy of Book Six, and had some comments fromhim on it. Book Seven, with its enormously important quotationsfrom Kautilya, came before him in 1974. I appealed to Dr. L.Sternbach also for help with unidentified quotations. If neitherI, nor Dr. Sternbach, nor Pt. Ai thai could locate a citation itmust be an obscure one, and failure (for the time being) can beconfessed without embarrassment. Several points of grammar andphilosophy puzzled me. Professor Ludo Rocher and Dr. RosaneRocher nobly helped with the former; a helpful reference wassupplied by Professor J.C.Wright; and light was thrown on arecondite and damaged passage by Dr. Arnold Kunst. I am obligedto Mrs. A.Dasgupta for urging me not to tamper with niseara at8.117116 (comm.).

My greatest obligation remains that to Pt. Aithal, who in notime comprehended the task in all its aspects. I owed more tohim than the great pioneers owed their tribes of- pandits whoseefforts and vast knowledge were rewarded exclusively with a fewrupees. The "native assistants" thought themselves adequatelyso recompensed. There is a statue of Sir William Jones in London,depicting him being admired by pandits seated, or rather crouch-ing, at what was thought a properly humble level beneath hishumane effigy. His teachers had an affectionate regard for him,as they must have had for so apt and so liberal a pupil. Yetthe selfless devotion to science which is shown by the pandit,his concern only to be efficient, without regard for the desti-nation of the kudos, his preference for the substance withoutconcern for the appearance - these features have made a contri-bution to the scale and value of European studies of Indologywhich is too easily forgotten.

The Free University of Brussels originally undertook topublish this work, and it was for long in their editorial care.Events familiar to historians of the University scene in thosedays prevented publication and the responsible division returnedthe manuscript with expressions of regret. I cannot say howhonoured and grateful I feel that, at the prompting of Dr. Gnther-Dietz Sontheimer, the book was submitted to the Sdasien-Insti-tut of the University of Heidelberg. That august body generouslytook it up, and after considerable pains, found a publisher ableand willing to manage a more than ordinarily bothersome under-taking. Frau Dorothea Sntgen prepared the master-copy for photo-graphic reproduction. Those who have not seen such a thing intopublished form, through all its stages, can neither imaginewhat it means, nor understand my sense of obligation to thoseinvolved.

J.D.M.D.

ABBREVIATIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Abbreviations

A.B.A.B. O.R.I.

Jaim.J.B.B.R.A.S.

Aitareya BrihmanaAnnals of the BhandarkarOriental InstituteAdyar Library BulletinAtharva VedaAsvalyana Gyhya-strapastamba Dharma-straBaudhiyanaBhagavadgtiBhiruciBrhadranyaka UpanisadBrahma SutraBfhaspati-smrtiChandogya UpanisadcommentaryGautama Dharma-straKane's History of DharmasistraJha's Hindu Law in its SourcesJournal of the American OrientalSocietyJaimini, Mlmamsi StraJournal of the Bombay Branch ofthe Royal Asiatic SocietyKanva SamhitiKl":hanka Grhya-straKatyayana Srauta-sutraKau-filya, ArthasistraLi"j;ylyana Srauta-sutraManu

Maitriyanlya SamhitiMaitriyanya UpanisadMahibhirataMedhltithi

Schi.

Yi.j.Z.D.M.G.

Z.V.R.

Praskara Grhya-straParisara-smrtiRg-Vedaatapatha BrhmanaSacred Books of the East seriesPratpa-rudra!s Sarasvat-vilisaabara-svimlSadvimsa BrihmanaSaqikhya-KrikiH. Scharfe, Untersuchungen! zurStaatsrechtslehre des Kautalya(Wiesbaden, 1968)D. Schlingloff at Wiener Zeits.f.d.Kunde Sd- und Ostasiens 9(1965), 1 - 38Taittirya BrihmanaTaittirya SamhitTiri(Jya Mahi-brihmanaT.R. Traut mann, Kaut i ly a andthe ArthasistraiTeiden, 1971 )Vajasaneya SamhitiVasic-fha Dharma-straJ.J.Meyer, ber das Wesen derAltindischen Rechtsschriften"...(Leipzig, 1927;Yijavalkya-smrtiZeitschrift der Deutschen Mor-genlndischen GesellschaftZeitschrift fr vergleichendeRechtswissenschaft

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The work which follows is not an essay in philology, thoughit may well be useful to philologists. In their case no needwill be felt for bibliographical particulars relating to thetexts of Vedic authorities quoted, cited, or paraphrased byBhir. My philologist readers will find their way as well withoutany help I might proffer to them. When we come to the equallydelicate ground of the legal texts (which Meyer rightly saidwere as much magical and anthropological texts as juridicalauthorities properly so called) no library will suffice for theeditions and translations, commentaries and subcommentariesnecessary to arrive at the range of meaning, theoretical andpractical, which the said texts had during their immensely longworking lives. The labours of G. Jha (and of the anonymouspandits he used) in his massive Manu-smrti, the Laws of Manuwith the Bhisya of Medhitithi, 13 vols. (Calcutta, 1920-9) arenot to be relied upon for minute accuracy, but they fairlydepict the vastness of the philological and intellectualproblems involved. In my recent study of the life and work ofLuis da Cunha Gonalves I have ventured to remark that thefuture is blank for the comprehensive and understanding revivi-fication and rintgration of such studies, until India herselfobtains a more objective view of her own long march towards Law.But the anthropologist remains our hope that this unique massadventure in ideas will be digested, described, and communicatedto historians and political scientists, and, in order that ananthropologist may use such a work as Bharuci's,substantialbibliographical aid is called for.

I did my best with the bibliography to Religion. Law and theState in India (London, Faber, 1968). A thorough bibliography,of dharmasistra material in Sanskrit and in translation(neglecting only the very early nineteenth century editions) isavailable in R.Lingat, The Classical Law of India (Universityof California Press, 1973), which is the best short introductionto the Indian "science of righteousness" Furthermore, the

scholar who wishes encouragement to enter into this neglectedfield will find himself obliged to use two useful bibliographieswhich appear as portions of J.Gilissen's massive IntroductionBibliographique l'Histoire du Droit et l'Ethnologie Juridi-que; section E/6 by Ludo Rocher deals with the ancient Hindulaw, and section E/8 by myself deals with European influcencein South Asia, including its earliest phases. The scholar shouldalso search for more recent encyclopedic works published underthe editorship of J.Gonda, including my Dharmasistra and JuridicalLiterature (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1973) which supplements thework of Lingat (above). Though some rather patient searchingmay be required to find what is wanted, the bibliographical in-formation contained in Heramba Chatterjee Sistr's The Law of Debtin Ancient India (Calcutta, Sanskrit College, 1971) is useful;and the book itself an example of research of unusually highquality into the dharmasistra.

INTRODUCTION

Works such as these

The recent publications of W.Ruben have thrown fresh light onthe content, and atmosphere of the smrti texts and Kau^ilya.The work of R.Lingat, available in French and English, explainswhat the authors were attempting to achieve, relatively to ad-ministration of law. It remains for me to say a very few wordsabout an old work such as the present.

In a sense the dharmaslstra is out of date. In a sense varna("caste") or

tjati ("caste") belonged to an attitude to life whichthe twentieth century is making determined efforts to bury, withsome success. Some items, such as the stage of life of theforest hermit, were obsolete in the time of Manu except in somefrontier regions of the civilization. Fantasy dominates in manyparts of the smrti. But we are re-thinking our attitudes tooriental civilizations and we are discovering that far more ofthe old ideas survives, buriedSisometimes in the unconscious of"westernised" Asians,than they themselves care to discover.A work such as the present which is as much concerned withworldly as with other-worldly things will help to right a ba-lance which can so easily be misjudged. The smrtis themselveshave had a fair deal of study, from J.J.Meyer, Jha, Sen-Gupta,and others. This present commentary take's us much nearer to

13b Die Gesellschaftliche Entwicklung im alten Indien (Berlin,Pt.I, 1967, Pt.II, 1968).

14 For the institution of caste see L.Dumont, Homo hierarchicus(Paris, Gallimard, 1967) (an English version also is availab-le). For modern Indian sensitiveness to the survival of theconcept see P.B.Gajendragadkar, Secularism and the Constitu-tion of India (University of Bombay, 1971).

15 The astonishing information available about intercommunalstrife and resistance to anti-Untouchability legislation inGajendragadkar1s book (cited above) gives the lie to the NewIndia1s self-image.

16 For bibliographical aids see the Bibliography to Lingat, TheClassical Law of India and above, p.XXIV. Jha1s two volume

what judicial advisers actually prescribed for use, and it hasthe advantage of being singularly short in respect of the ex-cruciating subtleties and anfractuosities characteristic of thescience at later periods.

Manu certainly never flourished as a mere statement of what17

any group practised anywhere. He could have confined himselfto ritual practices which do not change readily and have aclearly recognizable prestige function for those that performthem. Manu, whilst referring to this aspect of life, bases hiswhole philosophy of social conduct upon certain presuppositionswhich were commonly accepted. These might be usefully summarised

digest is of very great utility for the student of any aspectof Books 8-9 of the Manu-smrti : Hindu Law in its Sources,vol. I (Allahabad, 1930), vol. II (Allahabad, 1933). It isto be supplemented by his Manu-smrti. Notes, Part III,Comparative (Calcutta, 1929, 894 pp.).

17 K. Motwani, Manu: a Study of Hindu Social Theory (Madras,1934) explores Manu in the light of the prevailing sociologyforty years ago. Of his Manu Dharma Sastra (Madras, 195p0>only chapters 3-9 of Pt. I. are usable. The whole work reeksof uncritical adulation. That is the approach even of K.V.Rangaswami Aiyangar, even in his Aspects of Social and Poli-tical System of Manu-smrti (Lucknow, 194-9). In view ofIndia1s manifest dependence upon Western inspiration andnorms, and even institutions, in modern times, a substantialsection of the intelligentsia require (as compensation) amyth of the originality and seminal quality of Indian civili-zation in the classical past. This gives rise to productionssuch as the Vivekananda Commemoration Volume, India's Contri-bution to World Thought and Culture (Delhi, 1970). Bhler1sstudy of Manu was extraordinarily arid and pedantic; but thefull force of modern sociology, anthropological thinking andpsychological techniques has yet to be brought to bear onManu.Studies such as Trautmann1 s in the textual derivation ofparts of Manu serve to belittle defensive acclamations ofManu1 s originality, but they do not place him in his context.No attempt whatever has been made to evaluate him as a think-er, since adulation effectively drugs curiosity, and affrontscomparative investigation at the moment when initiative isfirst called for. Such must be the comment on V.Raghava^shagiographical approach in "The Manu Samhiti", ch. 21 in TheCultural Heritage of India, 2nd edn. (Calcutta, 1959). Astatement such as "a study of its manuscripts has not shownany difference in the text" was evidently false ever sinceJ.Jolly1s edition in the nineteenth century; but a need foradulation takes precedence over the critical spirit, exceptin so far as Indian Indologists, such as Kane himself, reactcritically to any critical comment by a Western Sanskritist,Its title alone indicates the scope and academic value ofM.V.Patwardhan!s Manu-smrti or the Ideal Democratic Republic

(1) Human birth, suffering and death are due to experiences inprevious births; (2) in view of this everyone wishes to advan-ce (ambition was given a respectable explanation), and advancecannot be achieved by accumulation of wealth and power but onlyby attention to righteousness according to one's obligations atmaterial moments; (3) disregard of dharma produces sin, whichhas an automatic effect on one's destination in after-lives;(4) awareness of this affects the individual's willingness tosacrifice gain for spiritual advancement; (5) the life weactually live is the arena in which dharma is pursued, anddetails of this dharroa, infinitely varied according to theresponsibilities of the individual according to caste, age, sex,social status, etc., are to be known if evil fate is to beavoided; (6) there is no situation in which a norm is not oper-ative, but many factors will determine what is its content;(7) to a certain extent basic fundamental requirements of anethical nature, such as non-violence, may be taken as residuallaws if detailed provisions are not available; (8) the feistraalone determines what is righteous and unrighteous, what producesmerit and what incurs sin. The up-shot of such a programme ofteaching is that although rules of behaviour may change withcircumstances and the individual's situation, there is ncescape from the proposition that a standard of conduct andthought is demanded from everyone; over and above that residualduties of an ethical nature, and above those too the recommendedcourses of mental and spiritual discipline and self-adjustmentto the world as a whole which make one pattern of the worldlyduty to one's neighbour and the otherworldly duty to oneself.This peculiar marriage of the worldly and the other-worldly, or,as an Indian writer would put it, the "seen" and the "unseen",is not paralleled anywhere else, though Jewish law and canonlaw have counterparts.

The Manu-smrti took karma and varna, the fear of rebirthand the reality of caste by birth alone, factual entities, itseeraed, embodied in Indian society, and instead of evading them,built upon them. Every study of Manu is a piece of India'sintimate experience of the problem of mastery of the self, turn-

of Manu (Delhi, 1968). The want of comprehensive studies ofManu by competent scholars in modern times must be tracedback to such massive discouragements.

ing from sublim speculation to mundane questions of law; andBhiruci is the first in the series which we have. On the wholeit is the least troublesome to read. Though he is incomplete,what remains gives the authentic flavour of the system in thewords of a master, who wrote when Hinduism was still making itsconverts from amongst the myriads of societies of the Indiansubcontinent.

The identity of BhiruciIt has been known for a long time that Riminuja, the leading

philosopher of the Visis^idvaita school, claimed as one of his1 ft

predecessors a scholar named Bhiruci. The same name occursin a list of the teachers of that system of Vaisnava philosophygiven by Srlnivisadasa. The latter names them in the following

1Q order: ^ Vyasa, Bodhayana, Guhadeva, Bharuci, Brahmanandi,Dramidicirya, Srlparikusa, Nithamuni, and Yatlsvara. Nithamuni,so Kane says, is said to have been the grandfather of Yimunamuni,who was born about A.D. 916. It seems certain thatSrnivisadisa^ list is arranged in what its author supposedwas a chronological order. This would place Bhiruci only twosteps from the reputed author of the Vedinta-sutra himself.Something is known of Brahmanandi alias janka, and of Dramida.Both are distinctly archaic writers, archaic in style, and in

- 21Vedantic ideas. On the basis of the supposedly chronologicallist Kane placed Bhiruci, with his customary caution, "not later

22than the first half of the ninth century". Kane felt no mannerof difficulty in accepting the likelihood that Bhiruci the

18 Riminuja, Vedirthasamgraha, sec. 93. Ed. and trans. J.A.B,VanJBuitenen (Poona, 1956), p. 251. R.D.Karmarkar, ed.,Riminuja, Sri Bhisya, pt. I (Poona, 1959), p. XXI, has nothingto add.

19 Yatlndra-mata-dlpiki as reported by Kane, J.B.B.R.A.S., 1(1925), 209.

20 Pratipa-rudra, Sarasvatl-vilisa. Vyavahira-kanda (1927),pp. 11, 14, hoped to supersede jurists, the list beginningwith Bhiruci. He mentions him as "readily available"(pratigrham yidyaminesu) ; but who was Kulirka? And Laksmlpati(Lakmidhara) was so rare that K.V.Rangaswami Aiyangar couldfind no more than three copies in all India, and of someportions no copy could be traced. Of the list only Vijinesva-ra has survived in anything like the celebrity Pratipa-rudra'stext suggests. On Nithamuni see Raman, K. A.N. Sas tri Fest. (Madras,

21 Van Buitenen, op. cit., p. 29 f. 1971), 125-6.

22 HJ\, I, 265.= 1/1 (2d ed.), 567.

philosopher was identical with Bharuci the Jurist. J.A.B. VanBuitenen felt, on the basis of what he had gathered aboutfanka and his successor in the series, that the latterflourished not less than three centuries before the famousAdvaita philosopher Sankara (788-820). If this is reasonablefor Dramida, fanka's predecessor, Bharuci could hardly be lessthan three centuries earlier than Sankara, but perhaps a moreconservative estimate would be Judicious.

Were Bharuci the Jurist and Bhlruci the philosopher thesame? The name itself is rare and unfamiliar. The fact that weshall soon come across an instance of it in much more recenttimes emphasises its rarity. Jurists have more than oncemisread it as "Bhiguri". In our manuscript we find RJ -vimalaas an alternative to Bharuci, and Medhtithi!s references tow$Ju" (see 8.150151) fit our author. But this is of no immediatehelp. The short remarks of Bharuci in this work certainly havea bearing on religious and philosophical questions, particularlyin Book 6 and Book 12. But these are not conclusive. They mightwell not have been. Manu is a law-book for all sects, and isnot faithfully commented upon if the comment is angled specif-ically towards one school of thought. Bharuci has a distinctlyVedintic approach, with pre-Sakara characteristics. His doctri-ne of jnina-karma-samuccaya (the need for a combination ofknowledge and works) fits the role which Kane (without havingseen our text) already proposed to give him. But it would berash to collect from the terie comments of this commentary anyindications upon which weight might be placed. The unexpectedstatement at 12.15 that those who rely upon the Upanisads call*n e Paramatman (the Supreme Spirit) by the name sarlra ("body")

does not fit perfectly with Raminuja!s doctrines, and indeedis contrary to the trend of Vedntic thought except at itshighest and roost rarified levels. On the contrary Brahma, orthe paramatman. is sirlra, "possessed of a body; it entersbodies, and can be said to have a body. To identify it with thebody is Advaitism with a vengeance. It is not impossible that

23 Sankara on the Vedinta-stra IV.2, 13 may be referred to. Itwas argued that it was possible to see the embodied soul andthe body as non-different. On the Supreme Spirit and hisbd i 4 6y p p see Rmnuja himself at Vedirthasamgraha, secc. 74-6.Rlmanuja's reference to Br. Up. III.7**?in the Midhyandinarecension yasyitmi sarlrm "whose body is the Itman")suggests that Bhar. may have.had Br. Up. III.7 in mind (withits refrain yasya ... sarlram va^T*... yamayati ... itmi):

fanka's predecessors could have included teachers who took suchviews, so that Bhiruci (whether he subscribed to them or not)could make this remark, and what is more interesting, implythat Manu himself contemplated the notion.* We are fortifiedin such a conjecture by the discovery in the (obscure) Sub II aupanisad of the statement ya itmanam antare samcaran yasya Itmlsarlram supported in one recension of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad(yasyltml sariram) which literally (if not substantially)supports Bharuci. The reader will appreciate that this is notconclusive.

Of mach greater interest is the fact that Bhiruci wrote onthe Visnu-smrti. The author or compiler of the Sarasvat-villsatwhich originated, it seems, in Andhra circles in the early six-teenth century , had a great admiration for Bharuci, whom heoften links with Aparlrka. The similarity of views betweenBhiruci and Aparlrka, which is well evidenced, is not surpris-ing, especially when one considers that the compilers ofAparlrka1s work will have made searches for material on a scaleas great as Medhltithi in the ninth or tenth century and"Pratlpa-rudra" in the sixteenth.27 The likelihood that Bhiruciwas a southern author is enhanced if Aparlrka and Vijlnesvaraused him (both being southerners), if, as we shall see, Aparlr-ka and Mldhava (both being southerners) repeat readings of theManu-smrti which Bhiruci preferred, and if Bhiruci cites materialwhich is notably close in form to southern manuscript traditions.The author of the Sarasvati-villsa (if we may conventionallyspeak of "him" in the singular) cites Bhiruci with great fre-quency, and in nearly all cases from his commentary on theVisnu-smrti. It is indeed disturbing that the stras of Visnuquoted in such connections do not tally as a whole with our ex-

PRtant Visnu-smrti: several explanations j-ould account for this.

Sri Bbigya. sec. 289, on Bra. Su. II.1.23.24 Manu at 1.17 says that sarra (body) is the visible shape of

the pradhlna = .purusa .- Brahml. For the differing inter-pretations see Bhler, op. cit., 9.

25 Quoted by Rlmlnuja at Sri Bhlsy_a, sec. 256, on Bra. S II.1.9. Secc. 173, 24^, 253-6 deal with the question at large.

26 Kane, H.D.. I, 413.27 The fact that Aparlrka avoids citing juridical predecessors

does not affect this.28 Kane, H.D., I, 266. Derrett, "KuttI: a class of land-tenures

In S.India", B.S.O.A.S., 21 (1958), 69-70.

I toyed with the possibility that the compiler, whose original-ity goes beyond both scope and detail,invented the citations,naming a long-dead and rare author, and that he eitherpractised upon his employer or was practised upon himself -which latter is not unknown in the Indian scene. But afterlooking into the numerous examples which Kane lists from theDiyabhiga section of the Vyavahira-kinda of the S'arasvatl-vilisa I am'ready to abandon that suspicion.The views ofBhiruci, some of them well worthy of attention in spite of theirhaving being abandoned by sistrls of later centuries, agreewith those found in this present commentary on Manu. It is afact that the Visnu-smrti would appeal to a Visistidvaitin, andit would be quite appropriate for Bhiruci to write commentariesupon both Manu and Visnu. The reader will ask whether there isany reference to Visnu in the Vivarana (the present work)?Oddly he is cited (not by name) only once (on 3.39), whilethere is another doubtful reference (on 8.138 ). But thesignificance of this is not great seeing that Bhruci cites sofew authors in any case.

29 Derrett, "A juridical fabrication of early British India",Z.V.R., 69 (1968), 138-81, at pp. 173 ff. I add the fact(then unknown to me) that the bogus "Hamsa Yogi11 deceivedF.O.Schrader who actually lived in the proximity of the im-poster: Aus Indiens Kultur (Erlangen, 1927), 172-83 (see173 n.1). *

30 S.V. (Sarasvatl-vilisa), sec. 674 in T.Foulkes1 The HinduLaw of Inheritance (London, 1881) raises a point confirmedat 9.127,131; Secc. 350-1, 358 are confirmed at 9.59,68. Wemay infer that secc. 8,20 are confirmed at 10.115. Secc. 22,24, 38 are consistent with Bhir. at 9.104,111 if not im-plied there (and note that Maskarl is of the same opinion,XXVIII.2): meanwhile the topic is ventilated in thejudgment of Mr. Justice Viswanatha Sastri in Ktheesumma v.Beechu Indian Law Reports, 1950, Madras 502 at 529-30 (itselfoverruled in All India Reporter 1964 Supreme Court 136).S.V. secc. 196 is indeed Bhiruci's view as shown at 9.219.Sec. 302 is consistent with 9.192. Secc. 383-4 could be afair interpretation of Bhir. on 9.162-3. Secc. 607, 724agree with 9.188. Secc. 631-2 are consistent with 9.186;sec. 736 with 9.212. The following instances are not veri-fiable: S.V. secc. 69.78,142,176,213,270,316,335,4^2,501,637,711,719,752,764,780,782,839,847-8. There are four instanceswhere Bhir. comments on Yajavalya (Yij. I. 310,312,313,330)most probably in the commentary on Visnu, and these cannotbe verified (S.V., pp.19,20,23,32 of the Mysore edn. 1927).For the citations of Bhir. in the Mitiksara and theKrtyakalpataru see below, and, for an accurate citation in~

h S.V., n. 35 below.

A piece of evidence which will appeal to many is the word-for-word quotation of our Bhlruci (on 9.132) by Sudarsaniciryain his Ttparya-darsana

t a commentary on the Apa s tamba-grhya-stra (VIII. 21,2). Now Sudarsanlcrya is the author of a verypopular commentary on Riranuda* s Vedarthasamgraha. He might verywell be interested in any work of Bharuci, seeing that the latterwas in the line ol' his own hero's predecessors. Since Sudaran-cirya refers to Bharuci and his text (ityidina granthena) ex-plicitly, we are justified in accepting this as a piece oftestimony as to the genuineness of our present work. Sudarsina-caryafs own date is unknown, though it can be placed with some

"2confidence between 1300 and 1500.^ Bharuci was evidently avail-able then. So ancient an author could well, therefore, beavailable to Apararka, Vijanesvara , or the compiler of theSarasvatl-vilisa.

Thus Bhlruci, alias Rju-vimala, wrote a commentary or asub-commentary on the Vedanta-stra' , and a commentary each onthe Manu-smrti and the Visnu-smrti. When we survey the largerange of topics handled in the latter, which is obviously amuch later production than Manu, and regret, momentarily, thatBharuci did not include his opinions on those topics within ourpresent work, it is worthwhile to bear in mind that Manu! sscope and purpose differed from that of Visnu, and we cansuppose (for want of sufficient evidence to the contrary) that31 Ed. Chinnaswami Sastri (Kashi Skt. Ser. 59) (Benares, 1928),

251.32 P.K.Gode at Annals of the Bhandarkar Or. Res.Inst. 37 (1956),

55 f. S. quotes the Smrtyarthasara.33 The Mitiksara on Yaj. 11.124 says that Bharuci1s explanation

of the "fourth share" for unmarried sisters is wrong (Kane,H.D.. Ill, 619). The Parasara-Midhavya^ III/2, 510 and theS.V.

f secc.132-3, pp.361-2, say that Bhar. thought unmarriedsisters were entitled to a provision for their marriages andnot to a fourth share. This correctly represents Bhiruni!sposition ft 9.118. No doubt he explained this in his comment-ary on Viu also.

34 In fairness it should be added that Riminuja might wellhave used his predecessor Bharuci's text of Manu? He was notobliged to do so, but it would have been understandable ifhe had. In fact at the Vedirthasagigraha secc. 77,140 he reads12.123 with maruto fnye whereas Bhar. has the vulgate Manumanye; and at secc. 42,77 he reads anlyasam while Bhir. hasanor api.

tfcat difference was present as between Manu and the version ofYinu which Bhiruci was using. Bhiruci could safely neglectunder Manu topics which he would handle effectively under Visnu;for his readers would be likely to know that he had worked onboth. Manu, as the text of general validity and fundamental im-portance, and Visnu, a more detailed and less generally author-itative work, could serve educationally together, and a fullcommentary on Visnu would require numerous citations of Manu, asdid the commentaries on Gautama (whom he so frequently cites)and Yajavalkya (whom perhaps he does not cite here at all,the reference at 8.335 being ambiguous). That a religiousphilosopher should give his attention to Manu, who is commonlythought of as author of a law-book1 need surprise no one, sir.ceSankara himself, in his commentary on the Brhadiranyaka Upanisad,quotes passages from the second, sixth, and twelfth Books ofManu.343

We are, finally, to consider the manuscript in Telugu scriptin the Tanjore Maharaja Serfojifs Saraswathi Mahal Library, No.B.9458/D. 18504, entitled Smrtisira-samuccayak. Sri V.GopalaIyengar perused for me Nos. D.18505 and 18506, which bear thesame title, and are fragments of the same work. The beginningand end of the work as provided by No.18504 were made availableto me. The work purports to have been written by Bhiruci. Itstarts on fol. 2 r of the manuscript, and ends on fol. 29r. It isa digest consisting almost exclusively of extracts from thersis^ with the minimum of commentary. It ends dharmasastram idampunyam svayam Bhirucini krtam, subodho sarva-lokinim smrti-sira-samuccavah.I an convinced that the author has nothing to do withour Bhiruci, and belongs to a much more recent century.

The date of BhiruciThe references to our Bhiruci by Riminuja and rnivisadisa

will not serve to provide his date. The authors whom he himselfcitesv belong to the shadowy epoch corresponding roughly to theperiod between the beginning of our era up to about A.D.300, orto earlier epochs, so that a terminus post quern is impracticableand for a terminus ante quern we naturally look to see the earl-iest by whom Bhiruci is cited. He is not referred to earlierthan Medhitithi. The testimonia to Bhiruci are meagre. Kane

34a Raghavan, at Cultural Heritage of India (1959), 358, n.159.

discloses pathetically few references. The massive use of Bhi-ruci's commentary on Visnu by the Sarasvatl-villsa has beennoted already. Kane found only one reference to "Rju", inMedhitithi. The date of Medhitithi is important. Kane, Ghar-pure, and Jha studied Medhitithi independently, and the bestinformation we can obtain is that he lived between A.D.800 and900. We have seen that on stylistic and philosophical groundsone might place Bhiruci about 500-600, three centuries or sobefore ankara. That date might suit what we find in Medhitithi,but if there is virtue in conservatism a conjecture of circa600-6^0 could not lead us far astray.

Kane himself questioned me about Medhatithi1s relationshipto Bhiruci. He warned me that Medhitithi would not refer to himunder the title Smrti-vivarana-klrlb (as he does, 2.6,25) unlesshe held him in great respect. It is curious that in differentplaces Medhitithi refers to Bhiruci in different ways. Thereference to the Vivarana-kara at 5.82 coincides with that at2.25. The reference to the same at 2.6 (Jha, p.62) is sound.The reference to "Rju" we have noted (8.150 ) and one wonderswhether it appears in some manuscripts at 8.171 , and shouldoccupy the place taken by "Yajvan" (or is this Bhartr-yajvan?)at 8.14^ (at 154 yatjvasahlya-niradafr perhaps ought to beread rnv-).bhiruci1s views are constantly cited under thegeneral expression prve ("previous authors")." In the booksof Bhiruci1s Vivarana which we possess it is possible to checkMedhitithi1s use of his predecessor minutely. There cannot bethe slightest question but that Medhitithi drew a great deal(but not all the best^ of his material from that quarter. Thelong extracts from an arthaslstra work very closely resembling

35 In addition to the secc. noted by Kane in his vol. I, thereare valuable citations in the S.V. at pp. 19 (noted incident-ally), 150 (see Kane, III, 393, n.624), 160-1, 165 ff. (thekutti: see p. 6 n. 28 above), 354 (sec. 78: interesting inview of S.Indian customs). At p.150 (above) the discussionis about misa, a gold coin: in fact this agrees with whatBhir. says at 8.3187T9.

36 Kane, H.D.. I, sec. 63, p. 275 = 1/1 (2d ed.), 583.37 A letter, 28.Jan.1966. At p.570 (ubi cit.) Kane prefers"ex-37a Z.D.M.G.115,141 n.2. Kane rejects this (ubi cit.sup.)positors"!38 E.g. 9.203; 10.5.

10

were derived from Bhiruci and not from elsewhere.Many untraceable stanzas came from the same quarter. He actuallycopied a stanza which was only illustrative in Bhiruci, butwhich in Medhatithi became an additional stanza of Manu! Theways in which he utilised Bhiruci range from verbatim copying,and sympathetic paraphrasing, through development and imaginati-ve embellishment, to critical appraisal and rejection. UnlessI am mistaken Medhatithi repudiates, at 8.28, Bhiruci's notionwith the utmost vigour. I have illustrated these reactions in

41an article in the Adyar Library Bulletin , drawing upon Books8-12. Equally, if not more spectacular material is to be foundin Book 7, quite apart from the dramatic correspondences inrespect of arthasastra borrowing in that Book.

39 Derrett, "A newly-discovered contact between Arthasastra andDharmasistra: the role of Bhiruci", Z.D.M.G., 115 (1965),134-52. The arguments of D.Schlingloff, "Arthasistra-Studien",Wiener Z.f.d.Kunde Sd- und Ostasiens, 9 (1965), 1-38, tend-ing to suggest that Medhatithi (and so Bhir.?) (p.38, Nach-trag) did not have access to our Kautilya, must be reassessedin the light of T.R.Trautmann!s discovery (cited above) thatvarious Books of our Kautilya are not by the same hand. Bhir.may have had access to the predecessors of some portions ofour Kau., while Medhatithi had the predecessor to theadhyaks-pracara independently. The deviations are small inany case. H.Scharfe, Untersuchungen Z.Staatsrechtslehre desKautilyas (Wiesbaden, 1968), 4 suggests that the citationsmay have come from adaptations of the Arthasastra: but Bhir.is very close to Kau-J:. at tnes. A propos of Trautmann, p.149, middle column, I apologise for a slip at Z.D.M.G. 115,p.150, col.1: handling my own manuscript the word guflhShescaged my notice. Kau-J:. : tad asya gcLhili sattrinas casampadayeyuh; Bhir^ in fact reads tad asya gu

Throughout Book 7 we find instances where Medhatithi copiesBhiruci but misreads or misunderst ands him. Excellent passagesfor comparison appear at 7.151 and 155. An example of a mis-understanding comes at 7.15. He cannot read Bhiruci properly

Ac

at 7.70, and he misreads him J at 7.102 and 123. Misunderstand-ings^6 occur at 7.48 and probably at 7.182. To these instanceswe must add the numerous, sometimes comical, misreadings andmisunderstandings to which I drew attention previously. For afew errors chance would be a sufficient explanation, or thejirnoddhra which some think Medhatithi suffered when a completecopy was reconstructed, out of fragments from a number ofmanuscripts, none of which was complete in itself, for the42 7.151: Bhir.: anyatama-vivrddhau tesim ucchittir jayate. Medh.;

anyatama-vrddhau sarvotthitir jayet. 7.155: Bhar.:madhyamah, anayor ari-vijiglsvor asamhatayor nigraha-samarthah. udasmo 1ri-vijigisu-madhyamanam asamhatinim.Medh.: sva-bhumyanantara iti madhyamah. anayor_ari-vijigvorasamhatayor nigrana-samarthah na samhatayor udislnah._ari-vijigsu-madhyamanam nigraha-samarathah, na tu samhatanim.

43 7.15: Bhir.: yo hi sthivaro vrkso na bhogiya kalpate niyatamtasya parisodhanidy arabhate, yatas ca najparisuddhyatehitvisiv agiri-kriyate. Medh.: yo hi sthavarah phalam nadadati sa pariosjrate. na cet parisusyati sarvato vyapta-deatvic chitvagar-kriyate.

44 7.70: the two texts are easily compared, and it is evidentthat Medh. read prakrena, uddhata for ucchitena, parikrtamfor pariskrtam,israyanlyena for asrivanyena and capped thelot with a failure to distinguish which characteristics be-longed to which class of fort. His accurate copying in someplaces in this passage proves that his copy must have beenunclear.

45 7.102: Bhar.: sastrivarana. Medh.: vastrbharana. Bhir.:sandhi-pilatavi-sthinadisu capta-purusopagrhtaih sannaddhaihkavacibhih satatam jigaritavyam. Medh. : sandhi-pali-j:av-sthinidisv apta-purusair adhis-fhitah sanniruddhih kavacina^isatatam_jagaranirtham niyojya^i. 7.123: Bhar.: sucayo !pyadhikrta bhaksyanti vittinty arthatvanjnanusyinim ato nasucyanuminopeksanyis ta iti. Medh. : prak-sucayo fpi rakantivittani. atah prik-ucitvinuminena nopeksanyati. Cf. 7.155:Bh'r. : abhuksita. Medh. : abhyutthitah.

46 7.48: Bhir.: evam sihasam ca. tac ca sidhor nice karmaniniyogah, karmoparodho va nikiranam. droha upajsu-vadhaft,tantroparodho vi jvata eva. rsy^ a visaya-sidharanatva-vyivrttcch^ asyi para-gunopaghatirthi vik-pravrttis ces^avi. Medh.: sahasam jyiyaso nca-karmani viniyogah. tatropaghi-to_vi jvata eversyi. sarva-sidharanasya viayasya sidhiranya-vyivrttiti, asahanam vi guninim, gunesu dosiviskaranam asy.7.182: a comparison of the two commentaries shows that Medh.is developing Bhar., adding nothing of his own, but the driftof Bhir. has been largely misconceived.

12

- 47of king Madanapala. There is nothing to suggest that

Trnoddhara was made from copies which were faulty so farwent. The number of times where Medhitithi cannot under-

the author upon whom he generally was prepared to rely,laads to a different inference. It is inescapable thatltdhitithi or his link with Bharuci's text could not read theoriginal Bhlruci often uses unexpected words, and Medhitithivades an obscure passage suggesting (as he had a right to do)

the author must have had in mind, or may have had in mind.fact remains that it was not open to Medhitithi, with all

the resources at his command, to clarify the obscurities. Hemust have had but one copy before him, and was unable to procurea second. The copy may have been transliterated by a scribeJjnperfectly acquainted with the script. If Bhlruci was a-south-erner, the script was probably a precursor of that now knownas Grantha. This alone would not have frustrated an experiencedpandit. The manuscript must have been palm-leaf, damaged per-haps: it is likely that Bhlruci's Vivarana was not readilyavailable in a clean perfect copy even by A.D.800-900.

Many established dharmaslstra authors of the twelfth centuryand later do not cite Bhlruci, though some of his views were ofvalue. I doubted for long whether even Vijlnesvara had seen acopy of his work personally. Even Aparlrka, who owes much ofhis text and many of his opinions to at least the tradition ofwhich Bhlruci formed a part, d*d not think it worth his whileto mention his name. Medhitithi who was a northerner, andpossibly from the far north, took the trouble to obtain a copy;from which it follows that Bhlruci was a famous author. Yet bythe time of Laksmdhara, who had resources equal to thecollection of all dharmaslstra material, Bhlruci was not knownby his true name. Laksmdhara. and the author of the Vivlda-ratnikara who plagiarises him 8, call our author "Bhlguri" -

47 Cf^ Kane, H.D., I, 269, and G.Jha, "Editor's Apologia", Manu-gmtti with the 'Manubhasya1 of Medhitithi. Ill (Index of Ver-ses: Bibl.Ind., No.256) (Calcutta, 1939), pp.I-III.

48 Krtyakalpataru of Laksmdhara, Vyavahara-klnfla, p.352;Canevara, Vivada-ratnSkara, pp.103-4 (the exact sense ofapasara in 8.197-202).Medh. gives it as his second exposition.Bhar. (v.197198)("anotherfs" view): it is the seller'sacquisition by a means other than purchase. This supportsLakmldhara. From the commentaries in Mandlik's edition andfrom the Dharma-kosa it is clear that this curious notion ofapasara can be traced back nowhere else. Many in any caseread !navasara.

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and so does a famous and controversial Bengali scholar likeJimtavlhana. 9 Bhiguri is a "ghost" jurist, as a glance atKane's list of authors confirms. Bhiruci was thus much olderthan Medhitithi. To place him between A.D.600 and 650 is indeedconservative.

He would be, then, one of the earliest surviving dharmasistracommentators in prose. How does his style, manner, and contentrelate to this conjecture? There are three candidates of greatage: Maskarl, the commentator on the Gautama-dharma-stra,Bhava-svimI, the commentator on the Nlradlya-Manu-samhitl, andVisvarupa, the commentator on the Yljavalkya-smrti. I shouldplace Bhiruci earlier, though not necessarily much earlier,than all except Bhava-svim.

It will be accepted by present-day Indologists that afterManu a revolution in dharmasistra study took place. Prior tohim it had not been accepted that the king's duty to administerthe kingdom was part of dharmasistra. Obviously the "science ofrighteousness" could have little to do with the danda-nlti or,as it was later known, the arthaslstra, the "science ofpolitics". No doubt unseen considerations bore upon the kingtoo. A king who did not rule righteously was in danger of losinghis throne to a rival, whom the public would favour. But couldit be contended that the ins and outs of administration wereintrinsically susceptible to the same treatment as questionsof ritual, penances, caste organisation, and other matters inwhich social and ethical norms were the principal matter fordiscussion? Danda-nlti was a science based on expediency,experience, and prudence, upon considerations of a "seen"character, to use the sistric terminology. Dharma was basedrather upon the unseen, upon injunctions for which no obviousexplanation would be forthcoming.

Manu was the first to realise that popular conceptions ofjustice could not be satisfied on this basis. The requirementthat the king should deal justly by the public who paid himtaxes, and their rights against him, could not be enforced byany tribunal. Hence the superstitious sanction was the only realone, and the dharmasistra undertook to teach the whole of

49 Kllaviveka (Bibl.Ind., 1905), pp.14,20. The references arenot verified. See also Bllambha-f-fa on the Mitaksarl on Ylj.I, 159. Raghunandana did not know Bhlr. : JASB 3 TT515), 372.

14

righteousness, including that to which the king should conform.Morks of arthasistra, which were compiled in a rather differentspirit, were ransacked for suitable illustration, and first Manu,then Yljavalkya and other smrti-writers incorporated rulesabout administration, peace and war, politics, and, last butnot least, judicial affairs amongst their traditional rules ofa less mundane, though of course not less obligatory character.Manu himself may well not have used Kauilya!s Arthasastra, butrather a kindred treatise: butthat is another matter.

Smrti writers filled out the work of their predecessors, thesutra-klras. Commentators filled out details. The door widened,and more and more information poured in as time went on.Bhiruci is the earliest surviving author to recognise thearthasistra origin of the borrowings on practical matters, andused that sastra to explain the smrtifs meaning. More smrtisemerged, filling the gaps in continuous verse. Perhaps thedemands of dharmasastra increased heavily on the ritual andtheoretical side. Some practical matters, called looselyvyavahara, developed a dharmic ("righteous") character distinctfrom the objective tone of the surviving arthasistra counter-parts. Interest in the latter waned, perhaps since judicialadvisers came to be trained in dharmaslstra predominantly. Thelatter science gradually achieved what in modern businesslanguage is called a "take-over" of the former. Only theoccasional dharmaslstra writer%iakes extensive borrowings fromarthasistra works in late mediaeval times: one thinks ofNllakan-fha-bhat^a and the compiler of the Sarasvatl-villsa.As time went on the technique of commenting upon smrtis develop-ed, the scope of citation and discussion broadened: eventuallythe borderline between commentary and digest became blurred.

50 Scharfe, Untersuchungent 50, n.2,51 for Kau-filya's relation-ship to Manu at VII.7.28 and 1.15.60. Batakrishna Ghosh wasof a similar opinion, but (wrongly) dated Manu c.300 B.C. onthat account.

51 In the (Rija-) Nlti-maykha, using the Klmandaklya (B.K.Sarkar, Calcutta Review. 1935. 147-56).

52 Abundant use was made of Usanas (= &ukra) in such contextsas concerned the king1s government, within which judicaturemust fall. It is quaint that Varadarlja (Vyavahara-niraya.pp. 284-5) cites Kau^ilya on so improbable a subject assacrificial fees. That Kaujilya was in use in the twelfthcentury along with dharmasastra sources is proved by aninscription I cite at Lingat, Classical Law of India (197 3),p. 273. Visvarpa, Ylj. 1.541 (p.193). uses artnasgstrasources.

15

By the criterion of incorporation of material from othersources Bhruci is closest in age to Bhava-svim (whom Chintamaniwould assign to about 600) but earlier than Visvarpa. Bhrucimay be of roughly the same period as Maskarl. Both of them havea dry, succinct style. Both risk misunderstanding, employing thecryptic diction of the stra-kiras to whom, in a sense, theystill owe allegiance. When it comes, however, to the interpretat-ion of Gautama, Bharuci seems older: at any rate he does notpresuppose a knowledge of Maskar1s opinions, and he may wellhave been ignorant of them. That Maskar was a leadingdhar ma sastra writer in the South at any rate six centuries lateris quite clear from inscriptions. It is true that Kane placesMaskar later than Haradatta, because opinions which Maskarsays were held by others turn out to correspond with those ofHaradatta. But the style, and particularly the level of citationin Haradatta, though not conclusively distinct, suggest thatHaradatta is later, and indeed Kane would place him about 1100.There is no reason why Haradatta1 s opinions should not have beencurrent from long before his time - on the contrary the likeli-hood is great that sstric writers should rely heavily ontradition, rather than originality.

A number of smrtis and other sources cited by Bharuci areuntraced and are not found in later works. It is notorious thatsmrti writers followed their predecessors closely, and thatcommentators copied citations from their predecessors withoutcaring to verify, in many cases, whether the original text wasstill available. The fact that many of Bhruci1 s citations seemtotally to have vanished is another argument for relative age. No

53 Maskar's comment on Gaut. XXVIII.2 (p.438) is significantlysimilar to Bharuci's on 9.104, but there is not so close aresemblance as to support any_claim that there was arelationship between them. Bharuci1s unexpected use of Gaut.XXVIII.21 does not presuppose Maskar1s, nor is it reflectedby either of them. Similarly Bhir. says (9.155) that Gaut.XXVIII. 39 (40) refers to the son of an unmarried Sudra woman:this is an unlikely interpretation, and is not found inMaskar or Haradatta. But the Madanaratnapradpa (.1375-1450)334, and the Vivida-ratnikara (p. 536) take the passage torefer to the son of an unmarried woman; so that a traditionparallel to the normal must have existed, possibly under theinfluence of Yajavalkya's text on the same point.

54 Lingat, Classical Law of India (1973), p. 273.

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doubt many texts I have failed to trace will be found by others;but a residue may still remain. All the old commentators havesome citations which are not yet traced.

Bharucifs place in studies of ManuIf Bharuci is older than the next nearest surviving commenta-

tor on Manu by at least a century and a half, his opinions asto the text and. meaning of Manu must be of interest. Yet it isclear that there were many scholars who had handled Manu before;the opinions with which he disagrees are divergent in range andstyle. Manu had long since acquired the status which he stillhas, and it was essential that he should mean to his followerswhat their daily lives demanded. The requirement was equallysevere in all corners of India, and naturally text and inter-pretation were confused and filled with conflicts. It cannot besupposed that the maze of differing opinions which even so shortand sparing a writer as Bhruci reproduces grew up in a fewcenturies. The variant readings alone must have been the fruitof at least five centuries' speculations and scholarly contro-versies. What was demanded of any commentator who hoped thathis production would survive can be summarised as follows: -firstly he must produce a clean clear text; secondly he mustexplain the obscurities in it; thirdly he must reconcile hispotential readers to anything in it which might be opposed totheir prejudices and practices; and lastly he must show the im-portance and real worth of his text.

55 Bharuci notes with disapproval the opinion of other teachersat 6.14, 48, 72, 83, 94; 7.2, 84, 86 154; 8.24, 43, 77, 99,116115, 117116 127126 138139f 1 4 3 1 ^ , 148149,149150. 15158^9, 178^79,

1 8 7 1 8 8 , 197198, 274275, 284285, 28929

It was possible to gather variant readings and varying inter-pretations, to set them in a row, and indicate the writer's ownconclusion. Scholars who took their texts seriously wereprepared to spend years travelling from one centre of learningto another, and their writings were the fruit of a maturityrare in our own age, Medhitithi went the nearest to this standardamongst the commentators on Manu. His bulky work became rare.Bhiruci keeps clear of this pitfall. He indicates opinions hethinks worth preserving. One of his techniques is to leave the

57decision as between conflicting views to the judge. Eitherview will be good feastra; either view can be supported; oftenopinions opposed to his own are worth further thought; in anactual dilemma the judge will decide according to the customsand predilections of the locality. This is good practice, sinceif the commentator took a definite line, as several of hissuccessors did, his book would be confined to particular elementsin the population even amongst the Brahmins, and would notcommend itself everywhere. The gradual agglomeration of customsand traditions was not yet so far advanced as we later find it,and a dictatorial attitude, to be observed in Vijninfevara,would have been inappropriate.

Further, whilst allowing that variant opinions might equallybe admissible, Bhiruci1s leading technique is to weave hiscommentary around Manu's verses. The commentary with the textmake a continuous whole, and each section or division readslike a lecture regularly supported with the smrti as its back-bone. Bhiruci does not hesitate to break the lokas into threeor even four parts, commenting as he goes along, very much asif he had a sutra to expound. He does not lose the thread ofthe context, to which no commentator on Manu gives as muchweight as he does. Quite often (an excellent case appears at9.322) the interpretation owes much to the fact that the wordsare situated in the exact spot in which we find them. He adoptsa critical attitude to the text, and we find one instance wherehe expresses a doubt whether one feloka is genuine. Elsewhere

57 This remained good istric practice. Sir Francis Macnaghtenin his Considerations deplored its ubiquity in Jagannitha'swork.

58 9.93.

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his skill as an interpreter is marked. Contradictions areironed out by plausible devices, e.g. that Manu first stated aposition of which he did not approve, following it with his own-view."^ Bhiruci uses the maxims of interpretation, and shows asuitable knowledge of Mimimsi, as of course did Manu himself.Manu could not have compiled his text without knowing thatMlmsS would aid his commentators-to-be: indeed much of Manu isnonsense unless the mmmsaka's techniques are presupposed.Bharuci is strong as an interpreter of Manu, relying very littleupon extraneous help. Other smrtis, he will tell us, have otherviews, but we are trying to understand what Manu is driving at.

Manu could indeed be a puzzle. Or so we are bound to supposeif we imagine Bharuci approaching it with an open mind. But didhe? Was Manu ever taught, to him as to others, as a straight-forward textbook, each line meaning what it said? A glancethrough the text shows what Manu was attempting. The imperialis-tic absorption of arthaslstra materials was only one phase of ascheme to leave no element unrepresented which could conceivablybe attributed to the dharmasistra. Throughout the book thereare contradictions, repetitions, and sources of confusion, someof them lying upon the surface like stones to stumble over, andsome lying under the surface like pitfalls. It would have beenpossible for Manu to gather all his information, and to digestit Tribonian-style, striking out the obsolete, modifying theinaccurate, eliminating the inappropriate. He could have trimmedhis material so that it was systematic. If he had, it is doubtfulwhether he would have surviving the length of one century, letalone the nineteen or so that are to his credit. We must re-member that Vedic materials of various ages were still availableas sources; his competitors included pastama, Baudhiyana,Gautama and other sutra-writers, some of whom have since perish-ed wholly or in part. He aimed to write for all classes ofBrahminical society, relying upon the Brahmins of every Vedicschool to act as his patrons. Manu needed therefore to in-corporate material which was already accepted here and there,and to give room for techniques which differed considerably fromeach other.

59 9.124, also 8.331332, 9.34 ff.60 8.138139; 11.172173.61 On this process Trautmann1s comments, op.cit., 185-6, could

be broadened to apply in numerous contexts.

19

Here again appears the familiar Indian pattern, showing thatthis and that are both true, though they cannot be reconciledwithout the aid of mysticism. Methods of approach which hadachieved prominence in different milieux were put side by side.For example, one of Manu1 s predecessors taught the art ofpunishment with the aid of numerically expressed fines; another,more plausibly, based his scheme upon a notional division offines into the highest, middle, and lowest penalxy. Manu in-corporates both methods, and this type of arrangement is to beparalleled in many parts of the work. The different ways inwhich seniority amongst sons is to be recognized is one exampleamongst many which are perhaps not so glaring. Manu1s contributionconsisted largely in the contention that all the rules he in-corporated were, if read as if they were part of a truly integrat-ed organic whole, a viable exposition of Vedic learning, and thetrue norm for all Brahminically orientated societies to follow,Alternatives would be equally sound, and there could be nodisadvantage in Manu's placing together without hint of prefer-ence propositions which in their original environments had beenexclusive statements. In this way Manu eclipsed we do not knowhow many predecessors , and gave an aura of respectability topropositions, and indications of still more propositions notfully expressed, which could previously never have made headwayexcept as manifestations of particular sectional practices orlocal laws. And whatever Manu says is coloured with an extra-ordinary amalgam of philosophical propositions which agreechiefly in a refusal to accept any authority which is notactually (or nominally) based upon the Vede..

By drawing so many customs and propositions under the umbrellaof the Veda, Manu gave what we would now call a "Hindu" characterto much which critics at the time might have thought was intelle-ctually distinct from the main stream of Indian tradition. It

62 The supposition that Manu is the first of the extant smrtis(Lingat) seems sound, in spite of some doubts cast by S.*C.Banerji in his work on the Dharmasutras. Lingat1 s owninsistence that mutual contamination and deliberate falseascription prevent almost any possible chronologicalarrangement from being substantiated did not deter him fromrecognising in Manu the first deliberate movement away fromsutra style and the conventional sutras! scope. But whatexperimental projects preceded Manu?

20

mast have been an satisfying book to hear, with its numerousalternative methods of obtaining supersensory merit and itsinsistence upon the one factor which ancient India seems mostto have admired and modern India by no means totally rejects,namely that making oneself uncomfortable is meritorious. Theidea that the state is really concerned (whatever might be theappearances) with the attainment of "salvation" by each indivi-dual, and that it therefore has a spiritual interest in defeat-ing revolutionary schemes, and in keeping everyone to his place(unless emergency conditions justify a departure) is one whichwould appeal to the public. Manu offered to India a statement ofher social and political aims which was at once ethical (and soeternal) and practical (and so evolutionary). Without denying thepast, and without offering anything revolutionary to the future,Manu adopts many archaic pieces which enabled what I have calledhis "public" to recognize his bona fides at every few steps. Andwhere too much detail would be undignified Manu artfully condens-ed the rules.

Bhiruci was not in the least absurd when he set out to inter-pret Manu as if the latter were an ancient statute every syllableof which had been carved on stone. It is true that Bhiruci, likeMedhatithi later, comments that Manu was obliged to write inverse and that versification accounts for oddities in thelanguage. But this is an isolated observation, and we mostlyfind him applying to his text the canons of construction whichwere applied to the Veda, a truly archaic collection from which,it was axiomatic, one Kust strive to hammer every ounce of mean-ing by every known device - since there was no question there(as there might have been in Manu's case) of going behind thesource and finding out what the author ought to have meant.

Many verses which are found in Manu are also attributed inlater texts to other smrti writers. Some are age-old wisdom, andare probably of immense antiquity. With slight variations somehave an after-life, being borrowed from our Manu or from hissurviving patterns and carrying on in other smrti s which we stillpossess. Manu had dipped a very large bucket into the stream ofIndian tradition, and his success partly obliterated what hehad himself harvested. He paid his debt in time, and othersplagiarised him. But none except Yijavalkya bad his comprehen-ve grasp (we do not knew enough about Brhaspati), and, charac-teristically, no smrti besides those two has had any comparablestream of commentators.

Bharuci and the art of interpretationIn Appendix II I have listed the occasions where the maxims

are used. It is not