Dharma-Śāstra

DHARMA-ŚĀSTRA. - These are "treatises of law," sacred and profane, composed in verse, ordinarily śloka. They derive for the most part from more ancient dharmasūtra, "rules of law" in aphoristic prose, with a few stanzas inserted into the text. Such is the case of the Mānava-d.-ś. or "code of Manu," a reworking of a Mānava-d.-ś., of which a long citation survives in the code of Vasiṣṭha.

The code of Manu, the first man, considered the founder of social institutions, is the best-known d.-ś., also on account of Bühler's excellent translation in the Sacred Books of the East. The most ancient is the code of Gautama, to which the code of Vasiṣṭha refers, composed "some centuries B.C." (Bühler). The code of Manu is instead later, and belongs to an imprecise age, between the 2nd century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. The dharmasūtra, also called, by catachresis, d.-ś., being, on account of their antiquity (8th-3rd century B.C.), in closer relation to the Vedic schools, contain a greater number of religious prescriptions. While in the Dharmasūtra of the school of Āpastamba the norms of a juridical character occupy about a seventeenth part of the work, in the code of Manu they exceed a fourth part. The traditional masters of the d. are eighteen; a collection of 28 treatises was published in Bombay in 1883 under the title D.-ś.-sangraha.

Ferdinando Belloni Filippi