The Adyar"Library Series No. 27 RAJADHARMA RAJADHARMA (Dewan Bahadur K. Krishnaswami Row Lectures, University of Madras) BY K. V. RANGASWAMI AIYANGAR Honorary Professor of Economics, Benares Hindu University DR. B.R AMBEDKAR OPEN UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY - LIBRARY N08B80 THE ADYAR LIBRARY, ADYAR 1941 TO DHARMATMA PANDIT MADAN MOHAN MALAVIYAJI IN VENERATION AND AFFECTION PREFATORY NOTE IN the scheme of work outlined for the Library is the publication of a number of unpublished Dharmasfastra works, whose importance and rarity justify their in- clusion in the Adyar Library Series. An important " Digest of Hindu Law of the so-called South India School," the Vyavah&ranirnaya, which is older than the famous Parff&ara-Mndhaviya, and probably older than the Smfticandrikn of Devanna Bhatta, is ready for release as one of our Series. Another work which is on the anvil is the Kestava-Vaijaydntl the famous bhftsya on the ancient Vi$nusmrtt. Both these are being edited by Rao Bahadur, Professor K. V. Ranga- swami Aiyangar, Vidyavacaspati, Dharmyarths'astra- ratnakara, whose pioneer works on Ancient Indian Polity and Economic Thought are well-known to students of Hindu social institutions. He has now completed for another well-known series a reconstruc- tion of the long-lost law-book of Brhaspati, after many years of strenuous investigation. We are promised in the same series under his editorship, the first five volumes of Laksmldhara's Kftya-Kalpataru, the oldest extant digest of Dharmasfastra and they are to be followed by the remaining nine volumes of this great dharma- nibandha. These undertakings are the result of studies x RAJADHARMA furnish to the reader adequate material for judging of the validity of the positions taken by the lecturer, and are embodied in a series of very condensed essays or articles, amounting to more than a hundred-and- ' eighty, which are modestly designated as Notes.' Even a cursory perusal of their titles in the list of contents will disclose their importance as well as their range, ' ' variety and interest. The Notes form as important a part of the book as the text. Attention may be drawn also to the classified index, which may be useful to students. It is the work of a member of our staff, Mr. A. N. Krishna Aiyangar, M.A., L.T., Joint Editor of our Bulletin. The scheme of publication which the Adyar Library has laid down provides for the publication of lectures like those now introduced. Our obligation to Professor Rangaswami Aiyangar, who has so freely been collaborating with us, is all the greater since he has given the Adyar Library all rights both in the lectures on Rnjadharma now published and in other works which he is editing for the Library. To meet the convenience of readers of Sanskrit unfamiliar with N5gari script, he has given at considerable labour the ' many Sanskrit texts he has cited in the Notes ' in Roman. It is hoped that this will enable a larger body of readers to examine the citations than would be possible if Nagarl had been employed for their presentation. The Adyar Library G. SRINIVASA MURTI, 1st July, 1941 Honorary Director PREFACE IN the renaissance of Indian studies, which is a feature of our day, a branch which has not come to its own is Dharmasffistra. Even among its special students divergent views as to its character, scope, content, source, authority and affiliations are not uncommon. This is due neither to lack of material nor to lack of intensive study. Though only a small fraction of the vast literature of DharmasTastra has been printed and a still smaller fraction is available in translations, virtually all the great commentaries and digests that have survived eight centuries of alien and frequently hostile rule, are now available in one or other of our great manuscript collections. Dharmasfastra was a living subject down to the threshold of the nineteenth century. It was assiduously cultivated at the great centres of Hindu learning and digests were written as late as the accession of Queen Victoria. For a generation or two afterwards, proximate utility drew lawyers and judges to the intensive study of one section of it, viz. vyavafalra. A mild interest has since then been evinced by students of ritual in the other two sections, viz., acura and pr&yasccitta. Xii RAJADHARMA Legalist enthusiasm for Dharmasrnstra rapidly waned with the growth of case-law and the ever-widening rift between the traditional Hindu law and the judge-made law of the British Indian courts. If and when the proposal under consideration to codify Hindu Law (on the basis obviously of judicial decisions and re- formist advocacy) becomes fait accompli, the little interest which survives among professional n\pn will vanish completely. The contingency need not, however, cause misgiv- ing. Vyavakara doctrines have suffered greatly from specious reasoning and distortion in the interest of litigants and from their pursuit in the twilight of half- knowledge. If DharmasTastra continues to hold an attraction, it will be chiefly to students of history, who will turn to it for the light it will throw on the institutions and ideals, the life and thought of an age remote from their own. It will also count as a disciplinary study in the Universities. Its liability to distortion will not disappear altogether. To read the present into the past is a foible to which historians are liable. The political use of history consists in the past forming an arsenal from which weapons for present strife may be drawn. History is not immune from interested falsification or from erroneous conclusions due to religious or political bias. These risks will have to be faced by Dharma&astra also. But, as in the case of history, the margin of error can be reduced by the diffusion of high ideals of truth and accuracy and, as in the physical sciences which use laboratory methods PREFACE Xiii of investigation, by the provision of safeguards or * controls.' An aim of the lectures now printed was to evoke andx stimulate interest in a branch of study which was regarded for ages as of paramount importance for the upkeep of the social order. Other aims were to illus- trate its use to the student of Indian history and sociology, to define its position among kindred studies, and to vindicate the value of the traditional method of approach to it, the neglect of which has been the fertile source of numerous dubious conclusions now in circula- tion. An attempt was also made to demonstrate by examples the importance of securing, as a condition precedent to its study, a correct perception of the philosophic background of Hindu life and thought Sir Henry Maine, whose masterly studies of Roman and Celtic law, vindicated the value of the historic method, made many plausible and invalid generalisations when he dealt with Hindu jurisprudence. His errors sprang not from any defect of the historic method but from his conspicuous drift from that method in the case of Hindu Law, when he read into its authors motives and purposes as well as beliefs of his day, and showed in- ability to avoid bias due to a sense of racial and reli- gious superiority. It is natural but regrettable that the authority justly attaching to his name is still securing the currency of many erratic views for which justifi- cation will be difficult to find. It is still more a matter for regret that with far less excuse than Maine, who wrote from a cursory perusal of English translations of Xiv RAJADHARMA a few sm?Us and digests and without access in the originals to the major digests, commentaries andsittf&s,. modern writers, who enjoy these advantages, repeat or add to Maine's erroneous statements. Few modern books on Hindu ethics, for instance, are free, whether composed in a spirit of apology or appreciation or of hostile criticism, from statements which wider know- ledge of Dharmasfostra and its study, not apa# from but side by side with cognate subjects, might have prevented. In the Hindu view of life, aims, ideals and activities were not divided up and considered as in- dependent of one another. There was no distinction between things secular and things religious : the dis- tinction would have been unintelligible to the ancient Hindu. Society was viewed as indivisible, except for distribution of duties and obligations. On the equi- poise of duties duly discharged, whether of indivi- duals, classes or functionaries, was held to depend the harmony not only of a particular state or community but of the entire universe. Life was a continuum, not interrupted by death, and so were deed and thought. With such beliefs, to look into only one specialised subject like Arthasf&stra or Dharmasfastra, for a final interpretation of the meaning of any rule of life or institution, was to ask to be misled. This is why error pursues the heels of one who would study a section of Dharmasfnstra (e.g., vyavahttra) to the exclusion of the others, or study Dharmasrastra and Arthasrastra apart and as if they were not cognate and inter- dependant. Specialisation has . its "limitations. We PREFACE XV might acquire knowledge of the histology and ana- tomy of Hindu society, and miss all knowledge of its physiology and psychology. In earlier studies, some of which go back to 1914, it was my endeavour to indicate some of the devices which the traditional method of education and trans- mission of knowledge from generation to generation in " the Bookless ages," provided for a correct compre- hension of the Hindu ideals of life. The present lectures illustrate the uses of the traditional approach to the study of Dharmasfnstra and Arthasfostra, and the unwisdom of ignoring or rejecting, in the special conditions in which Indian learning was conserved, valuable oral tradition and its late record in books.