Bühler states plainly what his own text claims and why he does not accept it: "The arguments in support of the authenticity and authoritativeness of the Manu-smriti are extremely weak." The Laws of Manu asserts a divine origin; its translator, in the introduction to the standard English edition, says the case for that assertion does not hold.
The Laws of Manu — SBE Vol. 25 (trans. Georg Bühler, 1886)
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). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Sacrifices
Necessity of Penances
Classification of Crimes .
Penances
Transmigration
Supreme Bliss : . .
Doubtful Points of Law
Conclusion . . . . .
APPENDIX :-—
Quotations from Manu in the translated Law-Books
Synopsis of Parallel Passages .
InpEx . . . . . .
Additions and Corrections
Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the
Translations of the Sacred Books of the East .
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p. 617
INTRODUCTION.
I.
DIFFICULT as the historical problems are which the Dharma-sitras translated in vols. ii and xiv of this Series offer, they are infinitely less complicated than those connected with the metrical law-books and especially with the Manu-smriti, or, to speak more exactly, with Bhrigu’s version of the Institutes of the Sacred Law proclaimed by Manu. Though mostly the materials available for the inquiry into the history of the Dharma-sitras are scanty, and in part at least belong to the floating traditions which are generally current among the learned, but of uncertain origin, they not only exhibit no extravagancies, but agree fully with the facts known from strictly historical sources. Moreover, and this is the most important point, though the text of the Dharma-sitras has not always been preserved with perfect purity, they have evidently retained their original character. They do not pretend to be anything more than the compositions of ordinary mortals, based on the teaching of the Vedas, on the decisions of those who are acquainted with the law, and on the customs of virtuous Aryas. In some cases their authors say as much in plain words. Thus Apastamba repeatedly laments the sinfulness and the weakness of ‘the men of later times,’ and Gautama warns against an imitation of the irregular conduct of the ancients whose great ‘lustre’ preserved them from falling. It is, further, still possible to recognise, even on a superficial examination, for what purpose the Dharmasitras were originally composed. Nobody can doubt for a moment that they are manuals written by the teachers of the Vedic schools for the guidance of their pupils, that at first they were held to be authoritative in restricted circles, and that they were later only acknowledged as sources of xii LAWS OF MANU.
the sacred law applicable to all Aryas. This fact is fully acknowledged by the Hindu tradition, even in cases where the Dharma-sitras no longer are the property of particular Vedic schools.
He reports the traditional commentators grappling with the same problem rather than dismissing them: Medhâtithi must explain "how the Smriti can be called the Mânava Dharmasâstra, though, as is admitted in the work itself, Brahman was its real author", and offers two answers. The difficulty is internal to the tradition, not imported by a European editor — which is the more interesting fact, and Bühler lets it stand as such.
On the figure of Manu himself he is drier still: the statements about him "can, at the best, only furnish materials for mythological research." A translator can hold a text to be foundational and its author to be a myth at the same time, and this introduction is what that looks like.
A note on this capture, because it reads as corruption and is bounded. The Sanskrit that Bühler sets against his argument survives only as debris — "reaaiehy: wifeafarsrarcafuga: nu PAT ayfe ania wat" — where the OCR read the surrounding English cleanly and failed entirely on Devanagari. The English argument is unaffected and complete. The same failure appears in the Sushruta Samhita on this shelf, and in the Latin music theorists: it is a property of these captures, not of the texts.
shares a capture defect with The Sushruta Samhita — trans. Bhishagratna