VEDIC HINDUISM by S. W. Jamison and M. Witzel - people.fas ...

Jamison & Witzel VEDIC HINDUISM 22
Veda school (see the table; for a discussion of the texts and their contents see
Lingat 1973). Moreover, certain legal provisions in these dharma texts and their
exact phraseology are also found in the earliest Vedic prose and provide
evidence for a legal "code" of some formality even in this period (see Jamison
1991, pp. 217-221). Other comparatively old sections, "a Dharmasūtra in nuce",
are those dealing with the teacher's last instructions on proper behavior (TU
1.11, Ka�hŚiU 11), given at the completion of Veda studies (Witzel 1980:78).
However, the later Dharma texts, called Sm�ti, usually have given up this
link and have evolved into texts accepted on a more general level, all over
(northern) India. Bühler (1886) hypothesized that the Manu Sm�ti had
developed from an earlier but lost Månava Dharmaśåstra or Sūtra which
belonged to the Maitråya�ī school of the Black YV. This has not been found; his
case can be sustained, however, by a similar development in the related Ka�ha
school. Fragments of the lost Kå�haka Dharma Sūtra have been found in
Nepalese manuscripts, but the Dharma text of this school survived only in the
late Vi��u Sm�ti, composed under Vai��ava influence in Kashmir in the first few
centuries C.E. Many Sm�tis, such as the Śa�kha-Likhita ("the one written
down"), are even later and generally belong to the first millennium C.E. Their
earliest, but so far unused MSS. (c. 1000 C.E.) again come from Nepal. All the
earlier Sūtras (including the sources of Manu) were composed orally, without
the use of the script, just as the rest of the Veda.
The Sm�tis also differ from the Dharma Sūtras in that they contain a
number of rules on certain particular topics that seem to contradict each other.
Efforts to understand them by the historical development of the text or as
interpolations are misguided. Doniger and Smith (1991:liv ff.) do not quite
correctly describe the problem. "Manu", for example, merely sums up the
positions current in his time as derived from various areas and schools. The
procedure is foreshadowed by texts such as the Śatapatha Bråhma�a or the
Baudhåyana Śrauta Sūtra which discuss at length the various positions of
schools referring a particular point; the procedure, in fact, goes back all the way
to the early YV texts which frequently quote the various opinions of fellow
"theologians" (brahmavådin). Manu merely leaves out the sources of these
statements and does not offer a solution to these positions as they always can be
justified in theological discussion. The Dharma Sūtras as well as Manu27 have
been translated by Bühler 1882, 1886, 1879 and Jolly 1880, 1889. Many of these
topics as well as those from the preceding Śrauta texts can conveniently be
27 For the recent transl. of Manu by W. Doniger and B.K. Smith, 1991, see notes 6, 30.