history of dharmaśāstraby p. v. kane

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History of Dharmaśāstra by P. V. Kane Review by: L. Sternbach Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1969), pp. 821-822 Published by: American Oriental Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/596988 . Accessed: 10/06/2014 01:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Oriental Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.96.185 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 01:09:52 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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History of Dharmaśāstra by P. V. KaneReview by: L. SternbachJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1969), pp. 821-822Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/596988 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 01:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofthe American Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

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Brief Reviews of Books 821

principles: rasa, dhvani and alaidkira. Rasa may be characterized as a theory of aesthetic pleasure which attempts to explain both the mainsprings of literature and the culminating experience of the reader; dhvani attempts to embody the conclusions of Indian writers on the unique function of language in poetry, viz. sug- gestion; and alaikara attempts to illustrate not only the principles of rhythm and verbal music in literature but also the various ways in which common imagery are rendered poetic.

The two works deal with two of the three principles, viz. rasa and dhvani; both are reprints from articles originally published in research journals in India and both are not unknown to scholars dealing with the theory of poetics.

The reprint of Raghavan's work is greatly welcomed, since it is profound, scholarly and very useful. Raghavan has been carrying on research in the field of Sanskrit literary criticism for many years and the material he has brought together on the question of rasa shows how ex- tensive is his acquaintance with the literature on the subject. He dealt in particular with the number of rasas and the question whether Santa can be considered as an additional rasa, an additional art emotion. With unusual skill and erudition Raghavan discusses different views on santa adduced by authors dealing with poetics; his treat- ment of the question is comprehensive and convincing. He added to this edition on the study of the rasas, sup- plementary ideas like the identity of diambana and sthayin in the santa and has devoted greater attention to some topics like the treatment of bhakti by Bopadeva and Hemadri, the mdyd and citra-rasas, the varieties of vipralambha, particularly sdpa and karuTia vipralambhas, the daya-vira and the additional vyabhicdrins and sdttvikas.

His work is of great value and is indispensable to all students of poetics.

The same cannot be said about Krishna Moorty's work. He deals in particular with the genesis of the theory of dhvani and the Dhvanyaloka and its author- ship. His assumptions are known and in the greatest part are not accepted. P. V. Kane in his History of San- skrit Poetics, third edition, published already in 1957, explained the reasons for rejecting the assumptions of Krishna Moorty on the authorship and date of the Dhvanydloka and although the author in the addendum to Chapter IV (pp. 73-95) tried to refute the arguments of P. V. Kane, this reviewer is inclined to accept the postulates on the Dhvanydloka and dhvani as expressed in Kane's work. He does not think that it was worthwhile to republish Krishna Moorty's work in book form, the more so as most of the chapters already appeared in several research journals during 1947 to 1952.

L. STERNBACH NEW YORK

History of Dharmasdstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Re- ligious and Civil Law in India). By P. V. KANE. Vol. I, Part I, Revised and enlarged. Pp IV + 583. Government Oriental Series. Class B. No. 6. Poona: BHANDARKAR ORIENTAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, 1968. Rs. 50/-

The first volume of P. V. Kane's encyclopedic work on dharmasastra containing the basic and most contro- versial part on Dharma~dstra-on the concept and sources of dharma-appeared in 1930. Since then quite a considerable amount of material has been published in India and abroad about the dharmasastra literature; some new texts had been brought to light and some new light had been thrown or sought to be thrown on the already known texts. Since Kane's work was the classic on dharmasdstra, almost every scholar who dealt with dharmasdstra had to rely on his work; some of them added their own views and sometimes challenged his hy- potheses. Therefore, Kane found it necessary to publish a revised and enlarged version of his first volume of the History of Dharmasastra, the more so as volume I of his History of Dharmasdstra has gone out of print.

All scholars on dharmasastra must be grateful to Kane that at the age of 82 he decided to undertake this Her- culean task; he performed it with his usual erudition, conscientiousness and zest.

Kane's plan seemed to be the following: to leave the first edition unchanged as much as possible but to add new material which came to light in the last 35 years; and describe points of view of authors who challenged his findings as included in the first edition and then deal with them, either by accepting or rejecting them; in each case Kane gave the argument for or against their accep- tance.

Kane has the material on dharmasdstra at his finger- tips; he reads constantly, does not miss any new findings on any aspect of dharmasastra and therefore performed his task superbly.

The new edition is in reality a completely new study; to illustrate this, it is sufficient to mention that in the first edition the material dealt with contained 275 pages and in the second edition 583 pages;the chapter on Kau- tilya's Arthagastra which contained in the first edition less than 20 pages was enlarged in the second edition to nearly 110 pages; the chapter on the two epics as sources of dharmasastra contained in the first edition less than three pages and in the second edition was ex- tended by over 60 pages; a new chapter on the Smrti- kara-Paithinasi was added (chapter 46; in chapter 24 Kane dealt with the Sitra-kara Paithinasi).

It is easy to follow the additions in the first part of the new volume, since the author left the numbers of the footnotes unchanged and whenever new material was added he marked the new footnotes by letters a, b, c, etc., but after coming to Kautilya's Arthasastra he had to

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822 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89.4 (1969)

abandon this system because the new material greatly overweighted the old one.

The most interesting new findings and additions are in the chapters on Kautilya's Arthasastra, Manu-smrti, epics and Purdnas.

It is impossible even to summarize the new findings of Kane but it must be emphasized that in the chapter on Kautilya's Arthasdstra he came to the conclusion that the name of the author is Kautilya and not Kautalya and that the arthaskstra must be assigned to about 300 B.C. Hence, the two great authorities on Kautilya's Arthasaistra-P. V. Kane and R. P. Kangle- seem to agree on the two most controversial points regarding this work.

In 1967, R. Lingat published an excellent, profound and, one may even say, "revolutionary" study as far as the understanding of the dharmasdstras is concerned,- Les sources du droit dans le systeme traditionelle de l'Inde; in this work he frequently quotes Kane's book but does not always agree with him. This study seems to be un- known to Kane unfortunately. It deals partly with the same subject matter as the first chapter of Kane's work; since the approach to the problem of Kane and Lingat is quite different, it would be most interesting to know the opinion of Kane on Lingat's study. Also, the new edition of the Visnu-smrti with the commentary of Kegavavaijanti of Nandapand.ita by Pt. V. Krishnama- charya and the old J. Jolly's text on I/yavahdrddhydya from Harita's Dharmasdstra in the Abhandlungen der kon. bayer. Akademie der Wiss. XVIII seem to have escaped the attention of Kane.

All students of dharmasdstra must now await with impatience the second part of the revised edition of Volume I of P. V. Kane's work which will contain the synopsis of contents and the general index without which it is difficult to use this encyclopaedic work on dharmasdstra.

L. STERNBACH NEW YORK

Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in den Ldndern des Theravdda Buddhismus. By HEINZ BECHERT. Band I; Allgemeines und Ceylon; (Pp XIV + 377); Band II; Birma, Kambodscha, Laos, Thailand (Pp. X + 377). Band XVII/1 and XVII/2 der Schriften des Institute fur Asienkunde in Hamburg. Band I ALFRED METZNER VERLAG, Frankfurt am Main- Berlin, 1966; Band II OTTO HARRASSOWITZ, Wies-

baden, 1967.

H. Bechert spent 1958 and 1959 in Ceylon and then went to South-East Asia in 1962 and 1963. During these trips he was able to collect excellent material on Ceylon, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and partly on Viet- nam. This material was well digested and was the basis for an excellent encyclopaedic work on Buddhism, State and Society in these countries of Theravada-Buddhism.

The two-volume work (the third volume which will contain additions on the latest developments and on Buddhism in East-Pakistan as well as a r6sum6 did not appear yet) deals in the first chapter with Buddhism in general in olden and modern times and in the following chapters with Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (the last chapter is called "Excurs aiber Vietnam"). Each chapter, with the exception of the first and last, discusses in detail the people and the social structure of the five regions, including a short historical outline; then the sahghas, including the legal and social position of the bhikkus and bhikkunis, the sasana-reform, the question of the state and religion; and the ideology and cultural politics of the Buddhists in the five regions.

Each chapter is well documented and many extracts of official publications relating to the subject matter are quoted. The author concentrates on the present situation in the five regions and not on the history of their cultural or religio-cultural situation. Additional chapters dealing with the historical aspect would greatly enhance the value of the work, since religion and state is very closely connected in this area of the world, and it is very often impossible to understand the present situation without a short cultural history of the peoples of the regions.

Otherwise, the book is excellent and a mine of infor- mation for every student of South-East Asia. It is the first attempt to write a comprehensive study of the coun- tries of South-East Asia where Theravada-Buddhism is prevalent with a description, in particular, of the ques- tion of state and religion in this area of the world. Nowa- days any scholarly work on South-East Asia is most de- sired and solicited and it seems to this reviewer that an English translation of Bechert's work is called for. If that would be realised, historical chapters on the lines of G. Coedes's Les ?tats Hindouises d'Indochine et d'In- donesie or his Les peuples de la Peninsule Indochinoise or of H. Tinker's South Asia; a short history or similar works should preferably be added.

The appearance of the third volume with indices is expected with the greatest interest by this reviewer.

L. STERNBACH NEW YORK

Revenue Systems in Post-Maurya and Gupta Times. By DWIJENDRA NARAYAN JHA. Pp. xv + 235, Calcutta: PUNTHI PUSTAK, 1967. Rs. 25.

The work is to be a systematic study of the revenue system in Post-Maurya and Gupta times. Consequently the author bases it on the law-books of Manu, Visnu, Narada, Ydjfiavalkya, Brhaspati and Katydyana and omits from the list of source material the Kautiliya Arthagastra (p. 1-2). Here the misunderstanding begins. D. N. Jha's book is de facto based on the Kautiliya Ar- thagastra and the Smrtis mentioned above, as well as on the Mahabharata, Jatakas later inscriptions and some kdvya and kathd works. All these sources he quotes often.

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