PREFACE xix
Arthagastra can be readily understood by realizing that it was drawing from Yajriavalkya. Nor does Meyer attempt systemati- cally 1 to prove that Manu is later than the Artkafdstra, though on his theory of dates that text is more than a hundred years at least posterior to the Art/iafdstra. He has been as unable as the Indian supporters of Canakya's 2 authorship to explain the silence which the Artkafdstra observes regarding everything imperial and its absolute ignoring of the facts as to Pataliputra. His further effort 3 to prove the late date of the Gautama Dharmafdstra is in itself less open to objection, but his con- tentions are largely inconclusive 4 and do little more than prove, what has always been admitted, that our text of that Dharma- castra has been considerably worked over. The main principles of the development of the legal literature remain as they were formulated by Max Muller and Biihler, and further established by Oldenberg and Jolly. Indeed, Meyer's own view at present 5 — his conclusions lack admittedly any great fixity — is that Bau- dhdyana and Apastamba are pre-Buddhist, Vasistlia belongs to the fouith century B. c, and Manu may be ascribed rather nearer to 200 B. c. than to A. D. 300 ; there is, however, no tolerable proof of Vdsistka's posteriority to Apastamba, still less that Apastamba is pre-Buddhist in date. Still less convincing again are Meyer's efforts 6 to assign Narada to a period anterior to Manu and Yajriavalkya ; if we take our present texts as the basis of argument, this is certainly out of the question ; if we recon- struct originals for all three, we lose ourselves in idle conjectures which, like all guesses, merely obscure knowledge. For Ydjtia- valkya there may be noted an interesting effort 7 to reconstruct the original Smrti on the basis of comparison with parallel texts in the Agni and the Garuda Purdnas. It is very possible that
1 What is said, e. g. p. 113, is quite inconclusive; contrast IHQ. ili. 812.
2 Jacobi (IHQ. lii. 669-75) holds that Canakya and Visnugupta were distinct persons later confused wilh Kaufilya. Canikya may be original, not Canakya.
3 See references at pp. 417, 418.
' for 1 further argument as to Gautama's later date, see Bata Krishna Ghosh, IHQ. in. 607-11.
5 Altmd. RechtsschnfUn, p. vii.
6 Ibid., pp. 82-114.
T Hans Losch, Die YajHavalkyasmrti (1927). The Garuda has a version of the Nidanasthana of the Astahgahrdaya and Astahgasamhitd; Festgabe Garbe, pp. 103 ff.
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