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VISHNU.
used for this translation, and the principles of interpretation that have been followed in it, may be fitly reserved for the last.
us.
There is no surer way for ascertaining the particular Vedic school by which an ancient Sanskrit law-book of unknown or uncertain origin was composed, than by examining the quotations from, and analogies with, Vedic works which it contains. Thus the Gautama Dharmasâstra might have originated in any one among the divers Gautama Karanas with which Indian tradition acquaints But the comparatively numerous passages which its author has borrowed from the Samhitâ and from one Brâhmana of the Sâma-veda prove that it must belong to one of those Gautama Karanas who studied the Sâma-veda 1. Regarding the code of Yâgñavalkya we learn from tradition that a Vedic teacher of that name was the reputed author of the White Yagur-veda. But this coincidence might be looked upon as casual, if the Yâgñavalkya-smriti did not contain a number of Mantras from that Vedic Samhitâ, and a number of very striking analogies, in the section on funeral ceremonies particularly, with the Grihyasûtra of the Vâgasaneyins, the Kâtîya Grihya-sûtra of Pâraskara 2. In the case of the Vishnu-sûtra an enquiry of this kind is specially called for, because tradition leaves us entirely in the dark as to its real author. The fiction that the laws promulgated in Chapters II-XCVII were communicated by the god Vishnu to the goddess of the earth, is of course utterly worthless for historical purposes; and all that it can be made to show is that those parts of this work in which it is started or kept up cannot rival the laws themselves in antiquity.
Now as regards, first, the Vedic Mantras and Pratîkas (beginnings of Mantras) quoted in this work, it is necessary to leave aside, as being of no moment for the present purpose, 1. very well-known Mantras, or, speaking more
1 See Bühler, Introduction to Gautama (Vol. II of the Sacred Books of the East), pp. xlv-xlviii.
2 Bühler, Introduction to Digest, p. xxxii; Stenzler, on Pâraskara's Grihya. sûtra, in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, VII, p. 527 seq.
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