Bühler opens his account of how these texts were found by reproducing a private letter in full — Max Müller to W. H. Morley, "9, Park Place, Oxford, July 29, 1849" — printed as "connected with the first discovery of the Âpastamba-sûtras". A second edition of 1897 reaching back forty-eight years to a piece of correspondence, because the correspondence is the record of the discovery and nothing more formal exists.
The Sacred Laws of the Âryas, Part I: Âpastamba and Gautama — SBE Vol. 2 (trans. Georg Bühler, 1879)
Open to all
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
page 1
The translator’s English as printed (Georg Bühler & James Legge). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST
(2)
HENRY FROWDE, M.A,
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
THE
SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST
TRANSLATED
BY VARIOUS ORIENTAL SCHOLARS
AND EDITED BY
F. MAX MULLER
VOL. II
@rford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
p. 1897
(AM rights reserved]
1 Brion Theological Sossinary |
NEW YORK CITv
Gift in Memor of lhe Lare—
elson Smith, Ess,
Masxicwn wrd_ nne_ EF. SmilfL
p. 1936
Orford
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
THE
SACRED LAWS OF THE ARYAS
AS TAUGHT IN THE SCIIOOLS OF
APASTAMBA, GAUTAMA, VASISHTHA,
AND BAUDHAYANA
SmilfL
p. 1936
Orford
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
THE
SACRED LAWS OF THE ARYAS
AS TAUGHT IN THE SCIIOOLS OF
APASTAMBA, GAUTAMA, VASISHTHA,
AND BAUDHAYANA
TRANSLATED BY
GEORG BUHLER
PART I
APASTAMBA AND GAUTAMA
SECOND EDITION, REVISED
@rford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
p. 1897
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DAY
$12.6 142197
CONTENTS.
a BAGE
INTRODUCTION TO APASTAMBA . . : . . . ix
InTROpUCTION TO GAUTAMA . . . . . . Xxilix
APASTAMBA’S Apuorisms on THE SACRED Law.
General Rules . . . . : . : . . 1
Initiation . . . . . .
Studentship. : . . .
A Student who has returned Home. . . . - 29
The Study of the Veda . . . . . . - 32
A Student who has returned Home. . . . . 48
Saluting . . . . . . . . : - 51
Purification . . . . . . : 54
Eating, and Forbidden Food . . . . . - 59
Lawful Livelihood . . . . . . . » 90
Penance . . . . . : . : : - 75
Rules for a Snataka. . . . . . . . 92
The Duties of a Householder . . . . . » 99
Inheritance . . . . . . . . . 130
Funeral Oblations . . . . . . . - 137
The Four Orders. . . . . . . . 153
The King . . . . . . . : . 161
GAUTAMA’S InstTITUTES OF THE SacRED Law.
Initiation . . . : . . . . : - 175
Purification . . . . . : . . . 179
Studentship. . . . . : . . . 182
The Ascetic . . . . : . . . . 192
The Hermit. . . . . . . . . 195
The Householder. . . . . . . . 196 viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Saluting . . . . . . . . . . 207
Times of Distress. . . . . . . . 2mr
A King and Braéhmama versed in the Vedas. . . 204
The Duties of a Snataka . . . . . . . 218
Lawful Occupations and Livelihood . .¢ 4+ ---s: os + _227__
The Duties of a King. : . . . . . 234
Civil and Criminal Law . . . . . . . 238
Witnesses . . . . . . . . . . 246
Impurity... : . . . . . . »_ 249°
Funeral Oblations . . . . . . . . 255
The Study of the Veda . . . . . . . 259
Eating, and Forbidden Food . . . . . . 265
Women . . . . . . . . . . 270
Penances . . . . . . . . . . 274
Inheritance . . . . . . . . - 302
Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the Translations of the Sacred Books of the East . . . - git
INTRODUCTION
TO
APASTAMBA.
For all students of Sanskrit philology and Indian history Apastamba’s aphorisms on the sacred law of the Aryan Hindus possess a special interest beyond that attaching to other works of the same class. Their discovery enabled Professor Max Miller, forty-seven years ago, to dispose finally of the Brahmanical legend according to which Hindu society was supposed to be governed by the codes of ancient sages, compiled for the express purpose of tying down each individual to his station, and of strictly regulating even the smallest acts of his daily life’. It enabled
' Max Miiller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 133 seq.
The following letter, addressed to the late W. H. Morley, and published by him in his Digest of Indian Cases, 1850, may be of interest as connected with the first discovery of the Apastamba-siitras :—
It enabled
' Max Miiller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 133 seq.
The following letter, addressed to the late W. H. Morley, and published by him in his Digest of Indian Cases, 1850, may be of interest as connected with the first discovery of the Apastamba-siitras :—
9, Park Place, Oxford, July 29, 1849.
My DEAR Mortey,—I have been looking again at the law literature, in order to write you a note on the sources of Manu. I have treated the subject fully in my introduction to the Veda, where I have given an outline of the different periods of Vaidik literature, and analysed the peculiarities in the style and language of each class of Vaidik works. What I congider to be the sources of the Manava-dharma-sdstra, the so-called Laws of Manu, are the Sfttras. These are works which presuppose the development of the prose literature of the Brahmamas (like the Aitareya-brahmama, Taittirtya-brahmasa, &c.) These Br&éhmaaas, again, presuppose, not only the existence, but the collection and arrangement of the old hymns of the four Samhitas. The Sitras are therefore later than both these classes of Vaidik works, but they must be considered as belonging to the Vaidik period of literatnre, not only on account of their intimate connection with Vaidik subjects, but also because they still exhibit the irregularities of the old Vaidik language. They form indeed the last branch of Vaidik literature ; and it will perhaps be possible to fix some of these works chronologically, as they are contemporary with the first spreading of Buddhism in India.
Again, in the whole of Vaidik literature there is no work written (like the Manava-dharma-sastra) in the regular epic Sloka, and the continuous employment of this metre is a characteristic mark of post-Vaidik writings.
One of the principal classes of Sfitras is known by the name of Kalpa-s(tras, x APASTAMBA.
him not only to arrive at this negative result, but also to substitute a sounder theory the truth of which subsequent investigations have further confirmed, and to show that the sacred law of the Hindus has its source in the teaching of the Vedic schools, and that the so-called revealed law codes are, in most cases, but improved metrical editions of older
WHERE THAT LETTER WAS FIRST PRINTED IS THE POINT. Morley published it in his DIGEST OF INDIAN CASES, 1850 — a legal reference work. So the question of which Sanskrit texts underlie the Laws of Manu was being settled, in correspondence, for a compiler of case law. The philology in these volumes had a forensic use in the courts of British India, and this introduction records the fact simply by citing a law digest for a point about Vedic chronology. A reader meeting the Sacred Laws as devotional literature is meeting only half of what they were.
The letter's argument is dating by dependency, and it is set out in three steps a reader can hold. The Sûtras "presuppose the development of the prose literature of the Brâhmanas"; those Brâhmanas "presuppose, not only the existence, but the collection and arrangement of the old hymns of the four Samhitâs"; therefore the Sûtras are "later than both these classes" — and the Mânava-dharma-sâstra, the so-called Laws of Manu, derives from the Sûtras. Nothing is dated by style or by feeling; each layer is placed by what it takes for granted.
The tradition's own distinction does the work of explaining why these texts carry authors' names at all. The hymns and Brâhmanas "are to be considered as revelation"; the Sûtras "are avowedly composed by human authors", and so "generally bear the name of their authors ... or the name of the family to which the Sûtras belonged." Attribution is a marker of a text's standing, not merely of its origin.
AND THERE WAS NEVER ONE LAW. "There was not one body of Kalpa-sûtras binding on all Brahmanic families, but ... different old families had each their own Kalpa-sûtras." A reader who expects a single ancient code is meeting instead the surviving members of a plural, family-by-family literature — which is exactly why this volume translates four schools side by side rather than one, and why the title says "as taught in the schools of".
On what is lost, one phrase is worth reading twice. Many Sûtras "have been lost. Sûtras are quoted which DO NOT EXIST IN EUROPE, and the loss of some is acknowledged by the Brahmans themselves." The second clause is a proper argument from the tradition's own testimony. The first measures a text's existence by whether a European library holds it — a habit of speech that reveals the survey's vantage point, and one worth carrying into any modern archive that reports what it holds as though that were what survives.