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INTRODUCTION.
xciii
mention time-honoured rules, legal customs, and social institutions, and afterwards to disapprove of them; and secondly, that, as our Smriti is in any case a recast of an earlier Satra, that fact alone is sufficient to account for contradictions. It has been shown above, that some contradictory passages, such as those concerning the respective rank of the mother and the teacher, or regarding the permissibility of certain marriage-rites, express conflicting views, mentioned also in the Dharma-sútras. The Manusmriti only reproduces the ancient opinions, but omits, possibly for metrical reasons, to mark them as belonging to different authors or schools. In other cases we may hesitate between two explanations. If we find, for instance, that our text in the third and ninth chapters violently inveighs against Asura marriages, and in the eighth and ninth lays down rules which presuppose the legality of the sale or purchase of a bride, we may assume that the first utterance is due to the editor of the metrical version, and that the second represents the more archaic doctrine of the Dharma-sútra. In favour of this supposition it may be urged that the Mânava Grihya-sûtra unhesitatingly admits the acquisition of a bride by purchase“. But it is also possible that the Dharma-sâtra itself contained both the condemnation of the custom and the rules regulating it. For similar contradictions occur also in other Satras. Thus Âpastamba expressly forbids, in his sections on Dharma, the sale and gift of children and the procreation of Kshetraga sons. Yet, in his Srauta-sútra I, 9, 7, he gives a rule showing how the Pindapitriyagña is to be performed by the son of two fathers (dvipita). Such a person can only be a Kshetraga, a Dvyâmushyâyana Dattaka, or a Putrikaputra. If it is borne in mind that Baudhayana, on whose works Âpastamba's Satras are based, admits the affiliation which the later member of his vidyāvamsa rejects, the obvious explanation of the contradiction is that Âpastamba, in spite of his disapproval of other than Aurasa sons, did
* See p. xxiv.
Mano III, 25, 51-54; IX, 98-100. · Manu VIII, 204, 124-125; IX, 97.
• See above, p. xxxix. * Åp. Dh. S. II, 13, 11; 27, 2.
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