DHARMASUTRA

ÂPASTAMBA

FOR all students of Sanskrit philology and Indian history �astamba's aphorisms on the sacred law of the Aryan Hindus possess a special interest beyond that attaching to other works of the same class.

GAUTAMA

COMPARED with the information collected above regarding the origin and the history of Âpastamba's Dharmastra, the facts which can be brought to bear on Gautama's Institutes are scanty and the conclusions deducible from them somewhat vague. There are only two points, which, it seems to me, can be proved satisfactorily, viz. the connection of the work with the Sama-veda and a Gautama Karana, and its priority to the other four Dharmastras which we still possess. To go further appears for the present impossible, because very little is known regarding the history of the schools studying the Sama-veda, and because the Dharmasastra not only furnishes very few data regarding the works on which it is based, but seems also, though not to any great extent, to have been tampered with by interpolators.