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INTRODUCTION.
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passages which have been justly noticed as marking the comparatively late period in which that law-book must have been composed 1: such as the allusions to the astrology and astronomy of the Greeks (Y. I, 80, 295), which render it necessary to refer the metrical redaction of the Yagñavalkya-smriti to a later time than the second century A. D.; the whole passage on the worship of Ganesa and of the planets (I, 270-307), in which, moreover, a heterodox sect is mentioned, that has been identified with the Buddhists; the philosophical doctrines propounded in 1, 349, 350 ; the injunctions regarding the foundation and endowment of monasteries (II, 185 seq.)—all these passages have no parallel in this work, while it is not overstating the case to say that nearly all the other subjects mentioned in the Yågñavalkya-smriti are treated in a similar way, and very often in the same terms, in the Vishnu-sútra as well. Some of those rules, in which the posteriority of the Yâgñavalkya-smriti to other law-books exhibits itself, do occur in the Vishnu-sútra, but without the same marks of modern age. Thus the former has two Slokas concerning the punishment of forgery (II, 240, 241), in which coined money is referred to by the term nânaka ; the Vishnu-satra has the identical rule (V, 122, 123; cf. V, 9), but the word nânaka does not occur in it. Yågñavalkya, in speaking of the number of wives which a member of the three higher castes may marry (I, 57), advocates the Puritan view, that no Sudra wife must be among these ; this work has analogous rules (XXIV, 1-4), in which, however, such marriages are expressly allowed. The comparative priority of all those Satras of Vishnu, to which similar Slokas of Yagñavalkya correspond, appears probable on general grounds, which are furnished by the course of development in this as in other branches of Indian literature; and to this it may be added,
See Stenzler, in the Preface to his edition of Yâgħavalkya ; Jacobi, on Indian Chronology, in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, XXX, 305 seq., &c. Vishnu's rules (III, 82) concerning the wording &c. of royal grants, which agree with the rules of Yågħavalkya and other authors, must be allowed a considerable antiquity, as the very oldest grants found in South India conform to those rules. See Burnell, South Indian Palæography, 2nd ed., p. 95.
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