direct statement. But the expiations, prescribed XI, 104–105, amount to a sentence of death. Hence our Manu-smriti, too, practically declares the crime to be inexpiable during the offender's lifetime. Its original, the Dharma-sûtra, may, therefore, be supposed to have had the rule which Gautama attributes to Manu. Nevertheless, owing to the circumstances mentioned above, Gautama's passage cannot be adduced as a perfectly certain proof of the early existence of the Mânava Dharma-sûtra.
Among the remaining Dharma-sûtras[1] there is only the fragment attributed to Usanas which seems to quote a Sûtra of Manu. At the beginning of the first chapter[2] we find a very corrupt passage containing a prose-quotation which according to two of my MSS. belongs to Manu, but according to a third to Sumantu. As the latter copy is, however, clearly more incorrect than the other two, and as a Sûtra by Sumantu is not known from other sources, the reading of the first two seems to be preferable. The contents of the quotation which apparently prescribes that on the death of an infant, of an emigrant, of one who keeps no sacred fires, of one who kills himself by starvation or by self-cremation, and of one slain in battle, no period of impurity need be kept, agree with the teaching of our Manu-smriti, V, 78, 89, 94, 98.
There is, further, one among the Vedic books on the ritual, the Sâṅkhâyana Grihya-sûtra, which possibly refers to the Mânava Dharma-sûtra. This work quotes the verse, Manu V, 41, which, as has been shown above, occurred also in the Dharma-sûtra as well as several other Slokas of
- ↑ Regarding the passage of Âpastamba II, 16, 1, which ascribes the revelation of the Srâddhas to Manu, see below, p. lix.
- ↑ I transcribe the whole beginning of the work, (
Indic characters) Thus two MSS.; the third reads, (Indic characters) and further on, (Indic characters) It is impossible to restore the whole passage. The end of the quotation may have been (Indic characters)
