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THE MIMAMSA AND HINDU LAW
107
Jaimini's insistence on the supreme value of the Veda in all questions was not without effect; the tendency in the Smrtis is, in harmony no doubt with a common practice, to allot in the case of partition of property a larger share to the eldest son than to the others. But there is Vedic authority for the statement that Manu divided his property in equal shares among his sons, and this doctrine has finally prevailed in the law, despite the efforts of some of the compilers of digests to compromise the matter in order to obey the clear directions of the Smrtis. In the legal schools, again, it has been found necessary to assign relative weight to Purānas and Smrtis, a distinction which is not found in Kumārila, who accepts the Purāņas on the same basis as the Smrtis. In the case of a divergence between Smrti and Purāņa the former should prevail in the view of Vyāsa; the Purana represents no more than custom, while the Smrti is a step nearer to Sruti.”
While the Mināmsä thus stands in close relation with Indian law, in its enunciation of principles in the form of brief maxims (nyaya), comparable with the headnotes of modern law reports, it stands in equally close relation with the popular vogue of maxims framed on the model whence the Mināmsā use is doubtless derived. Such popular maxims are freely cited by the text-books of the school, and It was presumbly on their analogy that the Adhikaraña headings were derived; the remarkable divergence of the commentators4 in allotting Sūtras to Adhikaranas indicates that the latter were not a primitive constituent of the Sotra text.
1 Cf. Mandlik, traps, of Vyarakaramayukha, p, 41, .1.
. Tagore Law Lectures, 1905. pp. 234, 235 ; cf., however, Mandlik, op. cit. p. XXX.
See Col. Jacob's Laikikanyaya Ajali (2nd ed., 3 parts). 4 Above pp. 4, 13. So in the Vedanta Sutra.
