History of India/Volume 1/Chapter 17

by Romesh Chunder Dutt

CHAPTER XVII

THE AGE OF LAWS AND PHILOSOPHY

THE age of laws, rationalism, and philosophy is, in many respects, the most brilliant epoch of India's history, for it was in this period that the Aryans spread forth from the valley of the Ganges and established Hindu kingdoms with Hindu civilization as far as the southernmost boundaries of the peninsula. Magadha, or South Behar, already known to the Hindus of the Brahmanic period, was now completely Hinduized, and the young and powerful kingdom founded there soon eclipsed all the ancient realms of the Ganges valley. Buddhism spread from Magadha to surrounding dominions, and Aryan colonists penetrated to Bengal and introduced Hindu religion and culture among the aborigines. The kingdoms established in the south won still greater distinction. The Andhras founded a powerful dominion in the Deccan and developed great schools of learning, while further south the Aryans came in contact with the ancient Dravidian civilization. The more perfect Hindu culture prevailed, and the Dravidians were Hinduized and founded kingdoms which became distinguished for learning and power. The three sister kingdoms of the Cholas, the Cheras, and the Pandyas made their mark before the third century B. C., and Kanchi (Conjevaram), the capital of the Cholas, distinguished itself as the seat of Hindu learning at a later day. In the west the Saurashtras (including Gujarat and the Maharatta country) received Hindu civilization; and in this period

SCULPTURE FROM THE BUDDHIST TOPE NEAR BENARES.

Ceylon was discovered, and formed a great resort of Hindu traders.

The practical and enterprising spirit of the age showed itself in literature as well as in territorial conquests.

All learning, all sciences, and all religious teachings were reduced to concise practical manuals called Sutras, whose characteristic is brevity, as verbosity is of the Brahmanas. One main reason which led to this extreme conciseness was that young Hindu students were expected to place themselves under some teacher at the early age of eight or ten or twelve, and for twelve years or more to remain in their teacher's house, doing menial service under him, begging alms for him, and learning the ancestral religion by rote. The diffuse details of the Brahmanas were therefore compressed into short treatises in order that they might be imparted and learnt with ease, and a separate body of Sutras was thus composed for each Sutra-charana or school. The names of the authors of many of these compositions have been handed down to us, and while the Vedas and the Brahmanas are declared to be revealed, no such claim is put forward for the Sutras, which are admitted to be human compositions. The so-called revealed literature of India closes, therefore, with the Upanishads, which form the last portions of the Brahmanas.

When the composition of Sutras had once begun, the system spread rapidly all over India, and Sutra schools multiplied. The Charanyavyuha names five Charanas of the Rig-Veda, twenty-seven of the Black Yajur-Veda, fifteen of the White Yajur-Veda, twelve of the Sama-Veda, and nine of the Atharva-Veda. A vast mass of Sutra literature thus gradually sprang up in India, but of the Sutras which must have been composed and taught in these numerous Sutra-charanas comparatively few have survived. The Sutra literature falls into three great classes, dealing respectively with religion (Srauta Sutras), law (Dharma Sutras), and domestic life (Grihya Sutras). Of these the earliest were the Sutras connected with religion and consisting

१७७

पञ्चाशद् ब्राह्मणो दण्ड्यः क्षत्रियस्याभिशंसने ।
वैश्ये स्यादर्धपञ्चाशत्शूद्रे द्वादशको दमः ॥२६८॥
समवर्णे द्विजातीनां द्वादशैव व्यतिक्रमे ।
वादेष्ववचनीयेषु तदेव द्विगुणं भवेत् ॥२६९॥
एकजातिर्द्विजातींस्तु वाचा दारुणया क्षिपन् ।
जिह्वायाः प्राप्नुयाच्छेदं जघन्यप्रभवो हि सः ॥२७०॥
नामजातिग्रहं त्वेषामभिद्रोहेण कुर्वतः ।
निक्षेप्योऽयोमयः शङ्कुर्ज्वलन्नास्ये दशाङ्गुलः ॥२७१॥
धर्मोपदेशं दर्पेण विप्राणामस्य कुर्वतः ।
तप्तमासेचयेत् तैलं वक्त्रे श्रोत्रे च पार्थिवः ॥२७२॥
श्रुतं देशं च जातिं च कर्म शरीरमेव च ।
वितथेन ब्रुवन् दर्पाद् दाप्यः स्याद् द्विशतं दमम् ॥२७३॥
काणं वाऽप्यथ वा खञ्जमन्यं वाऽपि तथाविधम् ।
तथ्येनापि ब्रुवन् दाप्यो दण्डं कार्षापणावरम् ॥२७४॥
मातरं पितरं जायां भ्रातरं तनयं गुरुम् ।
आक्षारयंशतं दाप्यः पन्थानं चाददद् गुरोः ॥२७५॥
ब्राह्मणक्षत्रियाभ्यां तु दण्डः कार्यो विजानता ।
ब्राह्मणे साहसः पूर्वः क्षत्रिये त्वेव मध्यमः ॥२७६॥
विट् शूद्रयोरेवमेव स्वजातिं प्रति तत्त्वतः ।
छेदवर्जं प्रणयनं दण्डस्यैति विनिश्चयः ॥२७७॥

LAW CODE OF MANU—A PAGE OF THE TEXT

of concise manuals of the details of Vedic sacrifices. Two collections of these Srauta Sutras belonging to the Rig-Veda, called Asvalayana and Sankhayana; three belonging to the Sama-Veda, and called Masaka, Latyayana, and Drahyayana; four belonging to the Black Yajur-Veda, and called Baudhayana, Bharadvaja, Apastamba, and Hiranyakesin; and one belonging to the White Yajur-Veda, and called Katyayana, have been left entire. To the general reader the Srauta Sutras are but dreary and tedious reading, and we therefore turn with pleasure to the Dharma Sutras, which present to us the customs and manners and laws of the times, and are far more valuable for our historical purpose. In the Srauta Sutras we see the Hindus as sacrificers; in the Dharma Sutras we see them as citizens. But the Dharma Sutras of this ancient period have a deeper claim to our attention, because they were modified and put into verse at a later age, and transformed into those law-books with which modern Hindus are familiar, such as Manu and Yajnavalkya. In their original Sutra form (often in prose, sometimes in prose and verse, but never in continuous verse like the later codes), they were composed, just as the Srauta Sutras, by the founders of the Sutra-charanas, and were learned by rote by young Hindus, so that they might, in later life, never forget their duties as citizens and as members of society.

Among the Dharma Sutras which are lost and have not yet been recovered, was the Manava Sutra, or Sutra of Manu, from which the later metrical Code of Manu was compiled, and which was held in high esteem in the Sutra Period, just as the metrical Code of Manu is honoured at the present day.

Among the Dharma Sutras still extant, the Vasishtha belonging to the Rig-Veda, the Gautama belonging to the Sama-Veda, and the Baudhayana and Apastamba belonging to the Black Yajur-Veda are accessible in English translations.

In point of time Gautama is the oldest, and we find Baudhayana transferring a whole chapter of Gautama's into his Sutra, while Vasishtha, in his turn, borrowed the same chapter from Baudhayana.

We have spoken of the Srauta Sutras which treat of the duties of a worshipper, and of the Dharma Sutras, which define the duties of a citizen. But man has other responsibilities beyond those of a worshipper and a citizen. As a son, a husband, and a father, he has duties to perform towards the members of his family. He has rites to perform in connection with domestic occurrences, which are quite different from the elaborate ceremonials taught in the Srauta Sutras. A distinct class of rules was necessary to fix the details of the domestic rites, and these regulations are given in the Grihya Sutras.

Much interest attaches to these simple domestic rites performed at the domestic fireside, and not at the hearths which had to be specially lighted at great sacrifices. The domestic fire was kindled by each householder on his marriage, and the simple rites, the Paka-yajnas, were easily performed. Gautama enumerates seven Paka sacrifices: Astaka, performed in the four winter months; Parvana, at full and new moon; Sraddha, or monthly funeral oblations; Sravani, Agrahayani, Chaitri, and Asvayuji, performed on the days of full moon in the months from which the rites have been named. The account of these rites contained in the Grihya Sutras is deeply interesting, because after a lapse of over two thousand years the Hindus still practise the same rites, sometimes under the same name, and often under a different name and in a somewhat different way. The Grihya Sutras also contain accounts of social ceremonies performed at marriage, at the birth of a child, at his first feeding, at his assuming the life of a student, and at other important periods in his life, and thus we get a complete idea of domestic life among the ancient Hindus from these Grihya Sutras.

The Srauta Sutra, the Dharma Sutra, and the Grihya Sutra go collectively under the name of Kalpa Sutra. Indeed, each Sutra-charana is supposed to have had a complete body of Kalpa Sutra, including the divisions mentioned above, but much of what once existed has been lost, and we have only fragments of the Sutra literature left. The entire Kalpa Sutra of Apastamba still exists, and is divided into thirty prasnas or sections. The first twenty-four of these treat of Srauta sacrifices; the twenty-fifth contains the rules of interpretation; the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh treat of the Grihya rites; the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth contain the Dharma Sutra, and the thirtieth section, the Sulva Sutra, teaches the geometrical principles according to which the altars for the sacrifices had to be constructed. In addition to the Sutras, ancient writers enumerate five other Vedangas, or departments of Vedic study, which may be briefly enumerated here.

Siksha, or Phonetics, is the science of pronunciation, and there is reason to believe that rules on the subject were formerly embodied in the Aranyakas and even in the Brahmanas, but that they have disappeared in consequence of the appearance of more scientific works on the same subject in the Philosophic Period. These works are called Pratisakhyas, since they were collections of phonetic rules applicable to each Sakha, or recension, of each Veda.

Many of the Pratisakhyas, however, have been lost, and only one Pratisakhya for each Veda (except the Sama-Veda) has been preserved to us. The Pratisakhya of the Rig-Veda is ascribed to the renowned Saunaka. Similarly, a Pratisakhya of the White Yajur-Veda is also extant and is ascribed to Katyayana. A Pratisakhya of the Black Yajur-Veda and one of the Atharva-Veda are also extant, but the names of the authors are forgotten.

Chhandas, or Metre, is mentioned in the Vedas, and whole chapters in the Aranyakas and Upanishads are devoted to it. But as in the case of Siksha, so in the case of Chhandas, we have a clear scientific treatment of the subject for the first time in the Sutra literature.

Vyakarana, or Grammar, was a product of this age, and the deservedly great fame of Panini, perhaps the foremost grammarian of the world, has eclipsed all other grammarians of the period. We will not enter here into the controversy of the date of this great scholar, who is thought by some to have lived in the fourth century B.C., but in our own opinion it seems not improbable that his date is to be placed before the rise of Buddhism. Whatever may be the fact, it is acknowledged that his grammatical rules affected the entire classical language of the Sanskrit and exercised an influence even on the modern science of language, which owes its existence to the opening of Sanskrit to Europe within little more than a century. Second only to Panini in ancient philological work is Yaska in the kindred department of etymology (Nirukta).

The object of Jyotisha, or Astronomy, which should likewise be mentioned here, was to give a knowledge of the heavenly bodies necessary for fixing the time for sacrifices, and to establish a sacred calendar.

Besides the six Vedangas detailed above, there is another class of works called the Anukramani, or Index to the Vedas, which also belongs to Sutra literature. The Anukramani of the Rig-Veda is ascribed to Katyayana and gives the first words of each hymn, the number of verses, the name of the poet, the metre, and the deity; and although there were older Anukramanis of the Rig-Veda, all have been superseded by Katyayana's fuller work.

The Yajur-Veda has three Anukramanis, one for the Atreya recension of the Black Yajur-Veda, one for the recension of the Charakas, and the third for the Madhyamdina recension of the White Yajur-Veda.

Of the Sama-Veda we have an ancient index in the Arsheya Brahmana, and others among the Parisishtas, or supplementary works; while one of the Atharva-Veda exists in manuscript in the British Museum.

It is appropriate to draw attention, furthermore, to a science which belongs to the Age of Philosophy. It is the science of geometry, which, like grammar, astronomy, and other sciences, owes its origin to India, and has its roots in religion, for geometry was developed in India from the rules for the construction of the altars. It should be remembered that the world owes its first lessons in geometry not to Greece, but to India, even if the Greeks of a later age cultivated the science with greater success than the Hindus. The system of decimal notation is also of Indian origin, as the Arabs first learned it from the Hindus and introduced it into Europe. All science must therefore recognize an obligation to India in this respect.

We have still to refer to the most important product of the Hindu mind in this Philosophic and Rationalistic Period. The inquiries started at the close of the Brahmanic and Epic Period in the Upanishads led to those deeper investigations and profound researches which are known as the six schools of Hindu Philosophy. The most abstruse problems of matter and spirit, of creation and future existence, were considered by the Sankhya Philosophy, not as by the Upanishads in guesses and speculations, but with the strictest method and most relentless logic. Other schools of philosophy followed the lead of the Sankhya system, and boldly inquired into the mysteries of soul and mind, of creation and of the Creator.

Orthodox Hindus became alarmed at the spread of skeptical ideas, and a reaction set in. The result is the Vedanta system of philosophy, which re-asserts the great doctrines of the Upanishads, and which forms to this day the basis of Hindu beliefs and religious convictions. In the meantime, however, a far mightier movement than that caused by philosophical opinions had been set on foot, when, in the sixth century before Christ, Gautama Buddha was born and proclaimed to the poor and the lowly that Vedic rites were useless, that a holy and tranquil and benevolent life is the essence of religion, and that caste distinctions do not exist among those who strive after holiness and purity. Thousands responded to his appeal, and thus a catholic religion began to spread in India, which has since become the religion of Asia.

From this brief account of the age given by way of introduction, the reader will have some idea of the intellectual activity of this most brilliant period of Hindu civilization. Religious rights and duties were laid down lucidly and concisely for householders; civil and criminal laws were compiled; phonetics, metre, and grammar were dealt with with scientific accuracy; geometry and mathematics were cultivated; mental philosophy and logic were studied and developed with marvellous success; and a noble religion was proclaimed which is now the faith of a third of the human race.