Moreover, in the section on women, Vasish/^a V, 3-4, the author makes a cross-reference to the rahasyas, the section on secret penances, and quotes by anticipation half a .SJoka which is actually found in chapter XXVIII. The inference to be drawn from these facts is, that the section on secret penances is not simply a later addition intended to supply an omission of the first writer, but that, for some reason or other, it has been remodelled. The answer to the question why this was done is suggested, it seems to me, partly by the state of the MSS. of the Va-sish///a Dharma^astra, and partly by the facts connected with the treatment of ancient works by the Paw^/its, which my examination of the libraries of Northern India has brought to light1. MSS. of the Vasish//£a Dharmajastra are very rare, and among those found only three are complete. Some stop with chapter X, others with chapter XXI, and a few in the middle of the thirtieth Adhyaya. Moreover, most of them are very cor- rupt, and even the best exhibit some Sutras which are hopeless. These circumstances show clearly that after the extinction of the Vedic school, with which the work origi- nated, the Sutra was for some time neglected, and existed in a few copies only, perhaps even in a single MS. The materials on which the ancient Hindus wrote, the birch bark and the palm leaves, are so frail that especially the first and last leaves of a Pothi are easily lost or badly damaged. Instances of this kind are common enough in the Gaina and Kasmir libraries, where the beginning and still more fre- quently the end of many works have been irretrievably lost. The fate of the Vasish///a Dharma^astra, it would seem, has been similar. The facts related above make it probable that the MS. or MSS. which came into the hands of the Paw^its of the special law schools, who revived the study of the work, was defective. Pieces of the last leaves which remained, probably showed the extent of the damage done, and the Paw^its set to work at the restoration of the lost portions, just as the Kajmirian Sa.hebra.rn Pandit restored the Nilamata-pura;/a for Maharaja Ra«avira.siwha. They,
1 See Report on a Tour in Kasmir, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xii, p. 33.
Introduction. Xxv
of course, used the verses which they still found on the fragments, and cleverly supplied the remainder from their knowledge of Manu and other Smr/tis, of the Mahabharata and the Purawas. This theory, I think, explains all the difficulties which the present state of the section on secret penances raises. Perhaps it may be used also to account for some incongruities observable in chapter XXX. The last two verses, XXX, 9-10, are common-places which are frequently quoted in the Mahabharata, the Harivaw^a, the Pa/7/£atantra, and modern anthologies. With their baldness of expression and sentiment they present a strong contrast to the pre- ceding solemn passages from the Veda, and look very much like an unlucky attempt at filling up a break at the end of the MS. In connexion with this subject it ought, however, to be mentioned that this restoration of the last part of the Vasish^a Dharma^astra must have happened in early times, at least more than a thousand years ago. For the oldest commentators and compilers of digests on law, such as Vi^/iane^vara \ who lived at the end of the eleventh century A. D., quote passages from the section on secret penances as the genuine utterances of Vasish///a. These details will suffice to show why I differ from Professor Jolly with respect to his conclusion from the agreement of the verses of Vasish///a XXVIII, 10-15 with the Sutras of Vishwu LVI. With the exception of the quotations, the Vasish/^a Dharma^astra contains no data which could be used either to define its relative position in Sanskrit literature or to connect it with the historical period of India. The occur- rence of the word Romaka, XVIII, 4, in some MSS., as the name of a degraded caste of mixed origin, proves nothing, as other MSS. read Ramaka, and tribes called Rama and Rama//za are mentioned in the Pura«as. It would be wrong to assert on such evidence that the Sutra belonged to the time when the Romans, or rather the Byzantines (Romaioi), had political relations with India. Nor will it be advisable to adduce the fact that VcsisaMa
1 Thus Vasish/Aa XXVIII, ^ is quoted in the Mitakshara on Ya^;*avalkya III, 298; XXVIII, 10-15 on Yagvlavalkya III, ^QJ ; and XXVIII,' 18-19, 22
on Yzig-wavalkj'a III, 310.
XXVI VASISH5PHA.
XVI, io, 14, 15 mentions written documents as a means of legal proof, in order to establish the ' comparatively late ' date of the Sutra. For though the other Dharma-sutras do not give any hint that the art of writing was known or in common use in their times, still the state of society which they describe is so advanced that people could not have got on without writing, and the proofs for the antiquity of the Indian alphabets are now much stronger than they were even a short time ago. The silence of Apastamba and the other Sutrakdras regarding written documents is probably due to their strict adherence to a general principle under- lying the composition of the Dharma-sdtra?. Those points only fall primarily within the scope of the Dharma-sutras which have some immediate, close connexion with the Dharma, the acquisition of spiritual merit. Hence it suf- ficed for them to give some general maxims for the fulfil- ment of the gu^adharma of kings, the impartial adminis- tration of justice, and to give fuller rules regarding the half-religious ceremony of the swearing in and the examin- ation of witnesses. Judicial technicalities, like the deter- mination of the legal value of written documents, had less importance in their eyes, and were left either to the de-ra/fcara, the custom of the country, or to the Niti and Artha-^a.stras, the Institutes of Polity and of the Arts of common life. It would, als >, be easy to rebut attempts at assigning the Vasish///a Dharma-sutra to what is usually ' a comparatively late period ' by other pieces of so-called internal evidence tending to show that it is an ancient work. Some of the doctrines of the Sutra undoubtedly belong to an ancient order of ideas. This is particularly observable in the rules res;; './ding the subsidiary sons, which place the offspring even of illicit unions in the class of heirs and members of the family, while adopted sons are relegated to the division of members of the family excluded from inheritance. The same remark applies to the exclusion of all females, with the exception of putrikas or appointed daughters, from the succession to the property of males, to the permission to re-marry infant widow?, and to the law of the Niyoga or the appointment of adult
Introduction. Xxv11
widows, which Vasish/^a allows without hesitation, and
even extends to the wives of emigrants. But as most of
these opinions occur also in some of the decidedly later
metrical Smrztis, and disputes on these subjects seem to
have existed among the various Bralimanical schools down
to a late period, it would be hazardous to use them as
arguments for the antiquity of the Sutra.
The following points bear on the question where the original home of the Vedic school, which produced the Dharma-sutra, was situated. First, the author declares India north of the Vindhyas, and especially those portions now included in the North-western Provinces, to be the country where holy men and pure customs are to be found, I, 8-16. Secondly, he shows a predilection for those redac- tions of the Veda and those Sutras which belong to the northern half of India, viz. for the Kanaka, the Va^asaneyi- j&kha, and^the Sutras of Manu and Harita. Faint as these indications are, I think, they permit us to conclude that the Sutra belongs to a /Tarawa settled in the north.
As regards the materials on which the subjoined translation is based, I have chiefly relied on the Benares edition of the text, with the commentary of Kr/sh#a- pandita. Dharmadhikari, and on a rough edition with the varietas lectionum from the two MSS. of the Bombay Government Collection of 1874-75*, B. no. 29 and Bh. no. 30, a MS. of the Elphinstone College Collection of 1867-68, E. no. 23 of Class VI, and an imperfect apograph F. in my own collection, which was made in 1864 at Bombay. The rough edition was prepared under my superintendence by Vamana/tarya GY^alkikar, now teacher of Sanskrit in the Dekhan College, Puna.. When I wrote the translation, the Bombay Government MSS. were not accessible to me. i could only use my own MS. and, thanks to the kindness of Dr. Rost, Colebrooke's MS., I. O. no. 913, from which the now worthless Calcutta editions have been derived either immediately or mediately. These materials belong to two groups. The Bombay MS. B., which comes from Benares, closely agrees with Krzsh«apa«<fita's text ; and E., though
1 See Report on Sanskrit MSS. 1874-75, p. n.
XXV111 VASISHTtfA.
purchased at Puwa, does not differ much from the two. Bh.,
which comes from Bhuj in Ka£/*, and my own MS. F. form
a second group, towards which Colebrooke's MS., I. O.
no. 913, also leans. Ultimately both groups are derived
from one codex archetypus.
The first group of MSS. gives a fuller and in general a correcter text than the second. But it seems to me that the text of B.s and still more Krzshwapaw^ita's, has in many places been conjecturally restored, and that the real diffi- culties have been rather veiled than solved. I have, there- fore, frequently preferred the readings offered by the second group, or based on them my conjectural emendations, which have all been given in the notes. To give a translation without having recourse to conjectural emendations was im- possible, as a European philologist is unable to avail himself of those wonderful tricks of interpretation which permit an Indian Pandit to extract some kind of meaning from the most desperate passages. In a few cases, where even the best MSS. contain nothing but a conglomerate of meaning- less syllables or unconnected words, I have thought it advisable to refrain from all attempts at a restoration of the text, and at a translation. A critical edition of the Vasish///a Dharmasastra is very desirable, and I trust that Dr. A. Fiihrer, of St. Xavier's College, Bombay, will soon supply this want. K>/sh«apa#dfita's commentary, for which he had not the aid of older vrittis, shows considerable learning, and has been of great value to me. I have followed him mostly in the division of the Sutras, and have frequently given his opinions in the notes, both in cases where I agree with him and in those where I differ from him, but think his opinion worthy of consideration.
In conclusion, I have to thank Professors R. von Roth,
Weber, and Jolly, as well as Dr. L. von Schroder, for the
verification of a number of Vedic quotations, which they
kindly undertook for me, as I was unable to use my own
books of reference during the translation of the work.
THE case of the Baudhayana Dharma-sutra is in many respects analogous to that of the Institutes of the Sacred Law, current in the schools of Apastamba and Hirawya- ke^in. Like the latter, it is the work of a teacher of the Black Ya^ur-veda, who composed manuals on all the various subdivisions of the Kalpa, and founded a Sutra-£ara«a, which is said to exist to the present day1. The Brahma- nical tradition, too, acknowledges these facts, and, instead of surrounding Baudhayana's work with a halo of myths, simply states that it was originally studied by and autho- ritative for the followers of the Taittiriya-veda alone, and later only became one of the sources of the Sacred Law for all Brahmans2. Moreover, the position of Baudhayana among the teachers of the Ya^-ur-veda is well defined, and his home, or at least the home of his school, is known. But here the resemblance stops. For while the Sutras of Apastamba and Hira«yakejin have been preserved in care- fully and methodically arranged collections, where a certain place is assigned to each section of the Kalpa, no complete set of the Sutras of Baudhayana's school has, as yet, been found, and the original position of the detached portions which are obtainable is not quite certain. Again, while the works of Apastamba and Hira«yakejin seem to have been kept free from extensive interpolations, several parts of
1 I must here state that during my residence in India I have never met with a follower of Baudhayana's school, and cannot personally vouch for its existence. But many Pandits have assured me that many'Baudhayaniyas are to be found among the Telingana and Kar«a/aka BrShmans.
2 See Govinda's statement, quoted above, p xiii.
XXX BAUDHAYANA.
Baudhayana's Sutras have clearly received considerable additions from later hands.
