Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1185

xvi
NÂRADA. -
mentaries and Dharmanibandhas from Medhåtithi's Manubhashya down to Gagannatha's Digest, translated by Colebrooke. The compiler of the Narada-smriti may have incorporated a number of these dicta in his own composition. At the same time, it is far from improbable that a work on law, called the Code of Manu in the version of Närada, may have existed by the side of the celebrated Code of Manu in the version of Bhrigu, and that the unknown compiler of the Narada-smriti may have utilised that work for his own composition, and enhanced the value and authority of the latter by referring to, and arranging in his own way, the reports current with regard to Manu and Nárada. The precise nature of the origin of such a work as the Narada-smriti must needs remain a matter for speculation ; but it certainly was an established practice with Sanskrit writers to graft their own compositions on earlier works attributed to fabulous personages of the heroic age of India, and indeed to fabricate an authority of this kind for the productions of their own pen. The probable date of the Code of Manu may be turned
Date of the to account for determining the date of the Nârada-smriti. Narada-smriti; just as the presumable date of the latter work has been used in its turn for fixing the chronological position of Manu. The composition of the two works is separated, apparently, by a considerable interval of time. If, therefore, the date of Manu has been rightly placed between the second centuries B.C. and A.D. by Professor Bühler 1, it would seem to follow that the Nárada-smriti can hardly belong to an earlier period than the fourth or fifth century A. D. The same conclusion may be arrived at by other, and independent considerations.
Thus the Narada-smriti agrees on many important Compared with points, especially in the law of evidence,
other Smritis, with the Dharmasastras or Smritis of Yågñavalkya, Vishnu, Brihaspati, Katyayana, and Vyâsa. It may be a little older than the three last-named works,
1 Loc. cit. p. xcvii.
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