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 1841

1xxx
LAWS OF MANU.
these 'latest portions of the epic.' The latter conclusion is, it seems to me, confirmed by some indications in the Smriti which point to an acquaintance with the Mahabhârata. The warning regarding the consequences of gambling, Manu IX, 227, certainly presupposes a knowledge of the legend of the Kurus and Pandavas. When it is stated there that 'in a former Kalpa the vice of gambling has been seen to cause great enmity,' this assertion can only point in the first instance to the match played between Yudhishthira and Duryodhana, which was the immediate cause of the great war. It may also contain, as some commentators think, an allusion to the fate of king Nala, but that can only be a secondary meaning, because war was not the result of his gambling. More significant than this passage is the fact that in chapters VII-X of the Manu-smriti a number of legends are quoted in illustration or in support of rules which, as the commentators repeatedly assert1, are taken from the Mahabharata, and that in one case just those which are mentioned in one verse of Manu (IX, 314) are found close together in the same chapter of the Mahabharata.
This relative position of the two works might induce us to assume with Rao Saheb V. N. Mandlik that the Mahabharata had a direct influence on the final redaction of the Manu smriti, and that the author of the latter appropriated from the former the very large number of identical verses which in the Mahabharata are not ascribed to Manu.
Tempting as the hypothesis of the dependence of the Smriti on the epic is, because it would account for the adoption of the Anushubh metre in the latter, a careful examination of the corresponding passages leads to a very different result. On going over the third, twelfth, and thirteenth Parvans of the Mahabharata I have succeeded in identifying upwards of 260 verses or portions of verses, not attributed to Manu, with Slokas of the Manu-smriti. This number, which corresponds to about one-tenth of the bulk of the latter work, would no doubt be considerably swelled by a comparison of the remaining portions of the epic, and
1 See notes to VIL, 41; VIII, 110; IX, 23, 129, 314-315, &c.
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