**DHARMA-ŚĀSTRA.** – These are *treatises on sacred and profane law*, composed in verse, usually in *śloka* meter. They derive for the most part from older *dharmasūtras*, *rules* of law in aphoristic prose, with some stanzas inserted into the text. This is the case with the *Mānava-dharma-śāstra*, or Code of Manu, a reworking of a *Mānava-dharma-sūtra*, of which a long quotation survives in the Code of Vasiṣṭha.
The Code of Manu, the first man, considered the founder of social institutions, is the best-known *dharma-śāstra*, also on account of Bühler’s excellent translation in the *Sacred Books of the East*. The oldest is the Code of Gautama, to which that of Vasiṣṭha refers; it was composed *some centuries* before Christ (Bühler). The Code of Manu, instead, is later and belongs to an uncertain period between the 2nd century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. The *dharmasūtras*, also called by catachresis *dharma-śāstras* on account of their antiquity (8th–9th century B.C.), are in closer relation with the Vedic schools and contain a greater number of religious prescriptions. Whereas in the *Dharmasūtra* of the school of Apastamba legal norms occupy about one seventeenth of the work, in the Code of Manu they exceed one fourth. The traditional teachers of *dharma* are eighteen; a collection of 28 treatises was published in Bombay in 1883 under the title *Dharma-śāstra-saṃgraha*.
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