________________
xci
As has been repeatedly stated, the text-books of the ancient Vedic schools, the Sûtras and the Upanishads, contain already a not inconsiderable proportion of Anushtubh verses which sometimes recur in identical or slightly varying forms. Hence it is no more than might be expected that the teachers of the special schools should have continued in the path of their predecessors, and should have gradually augmented the stock of their 'Spruchweisheit,' until it extended to all legal and philosophical topics, and the accumulation of these detached verses made it easy and tempting to convert the old aphoristic handbooks into metrical treatises1. The answer, which we are thus obliged to give to the question whence the editor of our Manu-smriti took his additional materials, agrees very closely with Professor Hopkins' hypothesis, who, as mentioned above, considers the law-book to be a conglomerate of the Mânava Dharma-sûtra and of the floating sayings attributed to Manu, the father of mankind. The latter restriction seems to me unadvisable, because among the mass of corresponding pieces found in the Mahabharata comparatively few are attributed to the Pragâpati, and because a Hindu who was
INTRODUCTION.
The probability of the existence of such a body of metrical maxims would become still more apparent, if it were possible to enter here on a comparison of portions of the older Purânas with the Mahâbhârata and the metrical Smritis, as well as on a detailed consideration of the ancient Buddhist literature. Though the difficulty and magnitude of such a task forbid its being attempted in this Introduction, I cannot refrain from inserting a few general hints. The Purânas contain a good deal that is identical with or similar to passages of the Mahâbhârata and Manu, and it is in many cases impossible to assume that the corresponding verses have been borrowed from the latter works. The Purânas, some of which, like the Vâyu, even in their present shape, go back to a very respectable antiquity, are popular sectarian compilations of mythology, philosophy, history, and the sacred law, intended, as they are now used, for the instruction of the unlettered classes, including the upper divisions of the Sûdra varna, the so-called Sakkhûdras. It was only natural that their authors should have appropriated suitable portions of the floating metrical wisdom of the philosophical and legal schools.
The comparison of the ancient Buddhist literature is particularly instructive, because the Buddhists are a special philosophical school, and because their oldest works, though mostly consisting of prose, include a considerable number of Slokas, among which a certain number, as, for instance, in the Dhammapada, shows affinities to verses of the Mahâbhârata and even of Manu. They probably took over a certain stock of ancient metrical maxims, and added a great number of new ones.
Digitized by Google
