THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION WORKS BY BHAGAVAN DAS Krishna. A Study in the Theory of Avataras. The Essential Unity of All Religions. Mystic Experiences or Tales from Yoga Vasishta. The Science of the I motions. The Science of Peace or Adhyatma-Vidya. The Science of Religion. (Sanatana Vaidika .. DharmaJ ... the The Science of; Sacred Word or Pranava Vada. r ' The Science of Social Organization or Laws of Manu in the Light of Atma-Vidya. THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION OB THE LAWS OF MANU IN THE LIGHT OF 5.TMA-YIDYS. BY BHAGAVAN DAS (Hon. D.L., Benares University Second Edition (Revised and Enlarge^ Volume I THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA 1932 Printed by A. K. Sitarama Shastri, at the Vasanta Press, Adyar, Madras. ADDENDUM ON page 274, after line 13, add : This Comparative Religion would embody and express that aspect of Metaphysio which would reconcile all particular religions by showing that there was Unity among them all as regards essentials, due to the Unity (Skt. fika-ta, P.-A. Wahdat) of the Self from which they all issue,, while the Difference was to be found only in the superficial non-essential details, varying with the variations of time-place-circumstance, due to the Manyness (Skt. An-ekata, P.-A. Easrat) of the Not-Self. Or, in accordance with the sub-division into- three, of the sciences subserving the first threefold end of life, Moksha-Shastra may be sub-divided into (a) Parshana-Shasfcra, Brahma-vi4ya, tha Science of the Infinite, including Acjhyatma- Shasfra or Psychology, Nyaya-Shasfcra or Logic, Mlmamsa or Pharma-Karma-Shastra or Ethics, (6) Yoga-Shastra, Applied Psychology, the Psychical Science ani Art of Superphysical Powers and of active identification of iniividual with Universal Consciousness, and (c] Bhakti-Shas^ra, the Science and Art of Devotion, of purifyin? the heart and spiritualising the emotions by the cultivation of the Love Divine (P,-A. Ishq*i-haqlql). CORRIGENDA Page Line For Head PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION A SERIES of four lectures was delivered by me on The Laws of Manu as embodying the principles of The Science of Social Organisation, in the last week of December, 1909, at the Thirty-fourth Annual Convention of the Theosophical Society, in Benares. The lectures had been prepared at the wish of my loved and honored friend and spiritual elder, Dr. Annie Besant, President of that Society, who, after Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott, has done most to turn the mind of modern India, educated in western ways of thinking, towards what is of lasting value in the ancient lore of India, and to develope national self-respect therein, by her forty years' whole-hearted self-sacrifice and unremitting labors for the uplifting of the Indian People. These lectures, after revision and expansion, were published in book-form by The Theosophical Publishing Society (now the T. P. House) in 1910. The book, despite many and grave defects, was ' ' well received by very diverse schools of Hindu thought in India, and seems to have secured 1 some favorable notice outside also. The rather 1 Vide, e.g., Urwiok, The Message of Plato (pub. 1920) ; L. Adam* Beck (E. Harrington); The Story of Oriental J. Philosophy (1928) ; Prof. 3. Mackenzie, Fundamental Prob- l*m* of Life Yiii THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION large first edition ran out in less than ten years* I was asked by the T. P. House, so long ago as 1918 or 1919, for consent to reprint. A number of notes had gathered, on the margins and on pasted-in slips, in my copy of the book. I wished to incorporate them in a new edition. I replied that I would like to revise. They gave me time. But I was lacking in foresight when I asked to be allowed to revise. The work of revision could not begin till some ten years later. Other literary work, some of which was perhaps less called for, and many private and public worries and engagements, some independent of, and many consequent on, the vast political turmoil in the country which began in 1919, (and which I have referred to more fully in the Preface to the third edition of The Science of the Emotions) took up all my diminishing energies and shrinking hours of daily work. At last, after repeated reminders from the T. P. House, I desperately sat down to the work of revision, a week or two after my elder son went into jail, in April, 1930, in connection with the Civil Disobedience movement directed by Mahatma Gandhi. But in all these years, more notes had kept gathering. India, with the rest of the human world, had been passing through amazing experi- encesand very distressful too for India, and some other countries, if not for all ; all sorts of ideas and feelings (not exactly quite new but garbed in PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION iz new and strong forms) connected with the Re* construction of Society with regard to all the main concerns of life. Education, Domesticity, Economics, Politics, Religion, were clashing in the intellectual and emotional atmosphere, with inevitable action and reaction on the physical life. I tried anxiously to find out if Manu had any reconciling sugges- tions to give to us, and to embody them in the new edition. But this was a task far beyond my poor capacities to cope with satisfactorily. And the distractions and interruptions continued almost worse than ever before. The compilation of a paper (recently published " " as a book) on The Unity of Asiatic Thought or The Essential Unity of All Religions, for the All-Asia Educational Conference, held in Benares, on 26th to 30th December, 1930, made a great interruption in the work on Manu. Then, as if in cruel and contemptuous mockery and challenge of the efforts of those who were trying to bring about peace between the creeds, came a terrible outbreak of engineered communal riots in Benares, on llth February, 1931, which lasted for about a week. This was followed by a far worse outbreak* resulting in much greater destruction of life and property, in Gawnpore, on 24th March, which also lasted for about a week. The Indian National Congress, sitting at Karachi in that same week, appointed a Committee, putting me on it as Chairman, to enquire into and report on the X TEX SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION Cawnpore riots, and on the causes of, and the remedies for, such happenings. I could not make up my mind to disobey the Congress. But the work of the Committee made a complete and very long break in the work on Manu. Before I could settle down to it again, the truce arrived at between Mahatma Gandhi as representative of the Congress and Lord Irwin as head of the Government of India on 4th March, 1931, was broken by the imprisonment of Mahatma Gandhi on 4th January, 1932, almost immediately after his return from the second Indian Bound Table Conference in London, and the consequent resumption of Civil Disobedience by the country. My elder son again went into jail, and my private and public worries began afresh. At last, seeing there was no hope of completing the revision of Manu within any reasonably short period, the T. P. House suggested that the bulk of the portion that had been printed off should be published as a first volume. I agreed. The volume now presented to the public is the result. I fervently hope the second and completing volume will be out before the close of 1933. The old form of lectures has been abandoned. The book has been recast to some extent, and a great many additions made, to the text as well as the footnotes. Dr. Annie Besant had said once, in the course of a conversation cm the subject, during PREFACE TO THE SECO1TD EDITION ri one of her latterly very rare visits to Benares, some time before I began revision, that the book required to be thought out anew. But almost all the matter of the first edition has been preserved, as it had elicited kind letters of appreciation from distant quarters of India and some other countries also. I am painfully conscious of the very serious shortcomings of the work. The ideas are scattered about, in more or less scrappy fashion, and look like a collection of separate notes just tied to* gether ; they are partly expounded in one place and partly in another, with repetitions, and not properly arranged and systematically developed. These great faults are due, primarily, to my very poor fitness for the task undertaken, and, second- arily, to the conditions in which it has been carried out conditions entirely antagonistic to sound and accurate scholarship and well and fully thought out and balanced conclusions, all which requires close, prolonged, undisturbed and unbroken study and reflection. The book is more like a collection of shanties roughly put up in intervals of hurried leisure amidst unavoidable other work, than like a well-constructed house. My only consolation is that the materials of which the sheds are here constructed, are good because they are ancient, and not mine at all and can be re-arranged into a fine building by more competent hands. I hope that learned readers, who may happen to believe Xii THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL ORGANISATION with me that the New India of the future can be born painlessly and grow and shape herself into health and strength and beauty, only if there is no complete break made between the past and the future, only if the essence of the traditions, the genius, the individuality, the Soul of the Old India, is carried over and reborn in the fresh body of New India, only if the form is constructed newly while the spirit remains the old, only if the nourish- ment provided by the past is duly taken by the future I hope that such patriotic, and at the same time humanist, sons and daughters of the Mother- land, the builders of the home of New India, may find the materials, here gathered, serviceable for their work, and may utilise it with all necessary corrections and improvements.