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INTRODUCTION.
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says that the student should take his food out of the alms received by him, Apastamba has an elaborate catena of rules as to how the alms are to be collected, and from whom, and so forth. Take again the provisions in the two works regarding the description of the cloth, staff, and girdle of the student. Apastamba refers to various opinions on this subject, of which there is not even a trace in the Anuglta. It appears that even before Apastamba's time, distinctions had been laid down as to the description of girdle staff and cloth to be used by the different castes—distinctions of which there is no hint in the Anugita, where all students, of whatever caste, are spoken of under the generic name. These distinctions appear to me to point very strongly to that ceremonial and doctrinal progress of which we have spoken above. The tendency is visible in them to sever the Brahmanas from the other castes—by external marks. And that tendency, it seems to me, must have set in, as the merits which had given the Brahmana caste its original position at the head of Hindu society were ceasing to be a living reality, and that caste was intrenching itself, so to say, more behind the worth and work of the early founders of its greatness, than the worth and work of their degenerating representatives. These comparisons, taken together, appear to me to warrant the proposition we have already laid down with regard to the priority of the Anugitá to Apastamba. If we have not referred to the rules relating to the two other orders of forester and ascetic, it is because the scope for a comparison of those is very limited. Those rules alone would scarcely authorise the inference drawn above; but I can perceive nothing in them to countervail the effect of the comparisons already made. And it must be remembered, that the rules as to foresters and ascetics would be less apt to undergo change than those as to students and householders.
It appears to me that the view we have now expressed may be also supported by a comparison of the doctrines of the Anugita and Apastamba touching the duties of Brahmaras. According to Apastamba, the occupations lawful
• Cl. also Bühler's Gautama, p. 175.
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