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NÂRADA.
to have been known to such an early author as Medhatithi, who quotes it, rather loosely it is true, in his Commentary on the Code of Manu, where he says that this work, consisting of one hundred thousand (slokas), was composed by Pragapati and abridged successively by Manu and the rest! This goes far to prove that the Preface to the Narada-smriti had attained notoriety as early as the ninth century A.D., and must be nearly or quite as old as the remainder of the work. The antiquity of the account given by Nárada of the origin and history of the principal code of ancient India is supported to some extent by the Pauranik statement regarding four successive remodellings of the original composition of Svayambhuva (Manu), by Bhrigu, Narada, Brihaspati, and Angiras', and by a curious tradition preserved in the Mahâbhârata, to the effect that the original Dharmasastra, produced by Brahman in 100,000 chapters, was successively reduced to 10,000, 5,000, 3,000, and 1,000 chapters by Samkara, Indra, Brihaspati, and Kavya 3. What is more, in a colophon of the ancient Nepalese MS. of the Narada-smriti, that work is actually designed as the Mânava Dharmasåstra in the recension of Narada (månave dharmasastre nâradaproktayam samhitayam), just as the Code of Manu in the colophons is usually called the Mânava Dharmasastra in the recension of Bhrigu (mânave dharmasastre bhriguproktâyâm samhitayam, or mânave dharmasastre bhriguprokte). Again, the chapter on theft (kaurapratishedha), which has come to light in Mr. Bendall's Nepalese Palm-leaf MS. of Nárada, and in a Nepalese paper MS. recently discovered by the same scholar, forms an appendix to the body of the Naradasmriti, exactly in the same way as an analogous chapter on robbery and other criminal offences is tacked on at the close of the eighteen titles of law in the Code of Manu, IX, 252-293. It also deserves to be noted, perhaps, that the Dhamathats of Burma, while professing to be founded
Manufikásangraha, P. 39, gloss on Manu I, 58; Bühler, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv, p. xv.
* Mandlik's Hindu Law, p. xlvii. • Mahâbhârata XII, 59, 22, and 80 foll.; Bühler, ibid. p. xcvi.
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