Vinaya Texts

SR No.: 007684
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids, Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2523
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 47 MB

Page 1795

xxxiv
me not
and mention Manu as the authority for the rule taught. With respect to these references it seems to probable that they have been taken from the Mânava Dharma-sútra. We shall see below1 that from the earliest times the mythical Manu, the father of mankind, was considered as the founder of the social and moral order, and that he was considered to have first taught or revealed religious rites and legal maxims. Hence I believe that these four verses give nothing more than an expression of the belief that their doctrines go back to the first progenitor of men. The first three among them either contradict or find no counterpart in our Manu-smriti. The fourth agrees in substance with Manu XI, 260-261. But it occurs in a chapter which is probably spurious, or, at least, full of interpolations. Whatever view may be taken concerning these passages, the allegation that the Mânava Dharmasûtra, known to Vasishtha, closely resembled, but was not identical with our Manu, need not be modified.
LAWS OF MANU.
If we look for other traces of the Sûtra, quoted by Vasishtha, it is possible that Gautama, who mentions an opinion of Manu, XXI, 7, refers to it. His Dharma-sûtra is even older than Vasishtha's, and long anterior to our Manu-smriti. But the possibility that Gautama refers not to a rule of the Mânava Dharma-sutra, but to a maxim generally attributed to the mythical Manu, is not altogether excluded. Gautama says, 'Manu (declares that) the first three (crimes, the intentional murder of a Brahmana, drinking Surâ, and the violation of a Guru's bed) cannot be expiated".' The wording of the Sûtra shows that it is not a quotation, but a summary of Manu's opinion. Our Manu-smriti explicitly teaches, XI, 90, the same doctrine with respect to the intentional murder of a Brahmana, and, if my explanation of XI, 147 is accepted, also with respect to the intentional drinking of Surâ. As regards the third offence, there is no
1 See p. lviii.
• The meaning of the phrase in the verse, occurring in the quotation from the Mânava Dharma-sûtra, is probably the same.
* त्रीणि प्रथमान्यनिर्देश्यानि मनुः ॥ The same opinion is expressed in the Mahabharata XII, 165, 34, but not attributed to Manu.
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