Jolly states the principle before he uses it, which is what makes the rest checkable: "There is no surer way for ascertaining the particular Vedic school by which an ancient Sanskrit law-book of unknown or uncertain origin was composed, than by examining the quotations from, and analogies with, Vedic works which it contains." Attribution by citation profile. What a text quotes tells you where it came from, whoever its title says wrote it.
The Institutes of Vishnu — SBE Vol. 7 (trans. Julius Jolly, 1880)
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The translator’s English as printed (Julius Jolly). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Sankh. — Sankhayana’s Grzhya-stra, ed. Oldenberg, in the fifteenth volume of the Indische Studien.
Y.— YAgtiavalkya’s DharmasAstra, ed. Stenzler.
Apast. and Gaut. refer also to Dr. Biiler’s translation of these two works in the second volume of the Sacred Books of the East.
INTRODUCTION.
THE Vishzu-smriti or Vaishvava Dharmasastra or Vishzusitra is in the main a collection of ancient aphorisms on the sacred laws of India, and as such it ranks with the other ancient works of this class which have come down to our time’. It may be styled a Dharma-sitra, though this ancient title of the Satra works on law has been preserved in the MSS. of those Smritis only, which have been handed down, like the Dharma-sdtras of Apastamba, Baudh4yana, and Hirazyakesin, as parts of the respective Kalpasitras, to which they belong. The size of the Vishzusitra, and the great variety of the subjects treated in it, would suffice to entitle it to a conspicuous place among the five or six existing Dharma-sitras; but it possesses a peculiar claim to interest, which is founded on its close connection with one of the oldest Vedic schools, the Kazfas, on the one hand, and with the famous code of Manu and some other ancient law-codes, on the other hand. To discuss these two principal points, and some minor points connected with them, as fully as the limits of an introduction admit of, will be the more necessary, because such a discussion can afford the only safe basis for a conjecture not altogether unsupported regarding the time and place of the original composition of this work, and may even tend to throw some new light on the vexed question as to the origin of the code of Manu. Further on I shall have to speak of the numerous interpolations traceable in the Vishzu-sitra, and a few remarks regarding. the materials
1 This was first pointed out by Professor Max Miiller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p.134. His results were confirmed and expanded by the subsequent researches of Dr. Biihler, Introduction to Bombay Digest, I, p. xxii; Indian Antiquary, V, p. 30; Kasmir Report, p. 36.
x VISHNU.
used for this translation, and the principles of interpretation that have been followed in it, may be fitly reserved for the last.
AND HE REFUSES THE EVIDENCE EVERYBODY REACHES FOR FIRST. Tradition says a Vedic teacher named Yâjnavalkya composed the White Yajur-veda, and a law-book bears that name — "but this coincidence might be looked upon as CASUAL, if the Yâjnavalkya-smriti did not contain a number of Mantras from that Vedic Samhitâ, and a number of very striking analogies ... with the Grihyasûtra of the Vâjasaneyins." The shared name is worth nothing until the citations corroborate it. That is exactly the discipline this estate lacked through eight instances of one work carried under several key systems: a name matched, and nothing checked whether the contents agreed.
shares a method with The Upanishads, Part II — SBE Vol. 15 — trans. F. Max Müller (1884)
He also excludes evidence for stated reasons before counting any of it. The purificatory texts of Chapter LVI "can afford us no help in determining the particular Sâkhâ to which this work belongs, because they are actually taken, AS THEY PROFESS TO BE, from all the Vedas indiscriminately, and because nearly the whole of Chapter LVI is found in the Vasishtha-smriti as well." Material that declares itself non-selective cannot discriminate, and material shared with another work cannot either. Only what is distinctive is allowed to weigh.
The finding, when he does count, rests on order as much as on content. Of about a hundred Mantras, "no more than forty or so are found in Vedic works hitherto printed, and in the law-books of Manu, Yâjnavalkya, and others; but nearly all are quoted, EXACTLY IN THE SAME ORDER as in this work, in the Kâthaka Grihya-sûtra" — which also shares "nearly all the Sûtras in which they occur", and four long chapters besides. The same set in the same sequence is not a coincidence two texts can have independently.
Then he settles the DIRECTION of the borrowing by a criterion worth borrowing itself. Where the two texts differ, the Vishnu-sûtra is usually the worse — false readings, enlargements — "However, there are a few cases, in which the version of the latter work is evidently more genuine than that of the former, and it follows, therefore, that the author of the Vishnu-sûtra CANNOT have borrowed his rules ... from" the Kâthaka. If B is ever better than A, B did not copy A; both drew on something earlier. Kern reasons the same way about the Pali and Sanskrit lives of the Buddha in this series.
shares a method with The Saddharma-Pundarîka, or Lotus of the True Law — SBE Vol. 21 (trans. H. Kern, 1884)