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 1806

INTRODUCTION.
xlv
occur in a portion of the Manu-smriti which probably is not ancient, and they are held by several of the special schools of philosophy. As regards the passages in Manu's second chapter which praise the holiness of the districts between the Drishadvatî and the Sarasvati, and between the Yamuna and the Ganga, they may indicate, as Dr. Johänntgen thinks, that the home of the school which produced the Manava Dharma-sätra lies in those districts. If that were certain, it would agree well enough with the facts known regarding the ancient seats of the Mânavas. The latter are a North-western sect, and extended, as the Mahârnava asserts, from the Mayara hill to Gugarat. Unfortunately, however, the Dharma-sätras of Vasishtha and Baudhayana contain almost exactly the same statements as Manu, and hence the verses of the latter possibly mean nothing more than that the Manavas, like many other Vedic schools, considered India north of the Vindhyas, and especially the districts adjoining the sacred rivers, as the true home of Brahmanism and of Aryan purity.
11.
While the preceding discussion has shown that our Mânava Dharmasastra is based on a Mânava Dharma-sútra which probably was the exclusive property of the Maitrayaniya-Mânava school, we have now to consider some questions connected with the conversion of the locally authoritative Satra into a law-book claiming the allegiance of all Aryans and generally acknowledged by them. The problems which now have to be solved, or at least to be attempted, are the following: 1. what circumstances led to the substitution of a universally binding Manava Dharmasastra for the manual of the Vedic school? 2. why was so prominent a position allotted to the remodelled Smriti?
1 See below, p. lxix. * Loc. cit. pp. 109-110.
Sacred Books of the East, vol. ii, p. xxxi; and L. von Schröder, Maitrayant Samb. I, pp. xxiv-xxviii. The ancient inscriptions name Maitråyana Brahmanas as donees in the Central India Agency and Gugarat. The Manava school still exists in the latter country and in Khandesh.
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