In perhaps the seventh century ce , the tradition of Dharmaśāstra developed, or rather began to use, a new written genre, the formal prose commentary (bhāṣya, ṭīkā, vivṛti , etc.). In the twelfth century ce , it developed another, the topical digest (nibandha ). A formal commentary follows a single root-text (mūla ) from beginning to end and strives both to explain grammatical difficulties (obscure, archaic, or unusual words; complicated compounds and syntax) and to elaborate the root-text’s meaning by dispelling objections, providing examples, resolving conflicts with other texts, and elaborating underlying ideas (Tubb and Boose 2007 : 3–5). A digest organizes many different root-texts according to topics, synthesizing a thematic logic to the textual corpus as a whole and using the same interpretive techniques as a commentary. To the extent that commentators cite other authors in support of their interpretations and digest authors provide long scholastic comments, the two genres merge, especially after the thirteenth century ce .
The present chapter first explores the question of why the commentarial and digest forms were adopted by authors of Dharmaśāstra. 1 It then surveys some important examples of both textual genres in order to show the main functions and goals of these works. Some authors of commentaries and digests wrote the most brilliant and insightful works in the whole tradition, and we want to highlight the originality and impact of these authors. Others, however, did little more than compile previous texts or provide simple glosses on the words of other authors. Thus, before looking at a few notable authors and their works, we want to set the genres in some historical context and present a new explanation for their appearance.
Though it is impossible to prove, it seems certain that scholastic analysis of the early texts of Dharmaśāstra occurred in tandem with the production of the texts themselves. From other disciplines, we have two early and prominent examples of formal commentary (Patañjali on Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī in the second century bce and Śabara on Jaimini’s Pūrvamīmāṃsāsūtra , ca. fourth or fifth century ce ) in which a familiar stylistic form is used. This style dominated all major disciplines of intellectual discourse. Together, the root-texts and their commentaries formed a tradition of analytical treatises known as śāstra . The fact that we do not have any formal commentaries on Dharmaśāstras dating from before the sixth or seventh century ce , however, suggests that most scholastic exposition was informal and oral. The density of expression in sūtra texts of all kinds seems to require a concomitant system for explaining them, whether oral or written. Even the earliest formal commentators whom we know already refer to predecessors and prior commentaries, though we no longer have these texts. Taken together, we can conclude that scholastic explanation itself was not new to Dharmaśāstra in the seventh century ce . Writing them down in formal treatises, however, may have been.
For the earliest period of Dharmaśāstra, we should imagine a collective enterprise in an educational setting (gurukula, ācāryakula, ghaṭikāsthāna ), where groups of students gathered around a teacher (possibly more than one), memorizing the root-texts and listening to oral explanations (Scharfe 2002 ). Given that early Dharmaśāstra emerged in response to non-Vedic ascetic traditions (primarily Buddhist) and forged a new ideology of the Brahmin householder, 2 the composition and transmission of root-texts dominated textual production as a way to solidify the practices codified in the texts. As the transmission spread further and the gap in time grew from the original collection of the major root-texts, however, both decreasing familiarity with the practices described and the emergence of new religious and legal practices necessitated a formalization of explanations of the root-texts (Lingat 1973 : 108–9). Distance in both time and space from the original sources thus encouraged formal commentaries to be written. The generally expanding use of writing attested within the later root-texts themselves also provides a context conducive to writing down commentarial explanations of now canonical texts. As the śāstra style of commentary was adopted in every field of intellectual inquiry in the middle of the first millennium, so also in the field of dharma did the formal, scholastic prose commentary become standard.
The most basic, yet most debated, question about Dharmaśāstra commentaries has been what were the commentators trying to do as authors? The two opposing answers go to the heart of how we should understand the tradition as a whole. The once standard view looks upon the commentators as updaters of the tradition who adjusted the texts to suit their contemporary times. Recently, Mathur has vigorously defended the position that “a very significant function of the medieval texts is to legitimize custom” and that “a commentator has to explain the provisions of a (nearly) fixed text before him and to show how it can be applicable to his times” (2007 : xx, xix). 3 The main purpose of commentaries, according to this view, is the legitimation of customary laws that conflict with textual laws by creating new interpretations that make old rules apply to new social conditions.
In theory, this view seems quite reasonable, and there are, in fact, several instances where commentators read the texts in a way that clearly conforms to prevailing social norms. For example, it is beyond question that Mādhava’s defense of cross-cousin marriage as legal and proper emanated from his location in South India where such marriages were the norm (Trautmann 1981 : 438–46). However, commentators almost never appeal to local legal or cultural norms as the authority for a rule of dharma . 4 Even Mādhava’s defense does not claim that cross-cousin marriage is legitimate because it is accepted in particular regions. The commentator’s real purpose, therefore, lies elsewhere.
In several important studies, Ludo Rocher has shown, “The commentators did not aim at introducing any novelties. Their sole purpose was a correct interpretation of the ancient texts as such” (2012 : 427). Note the stark difference. Commentators meant to interpret the texts by harmonizing conflicts between them, not to update them or to apply them to prevailing social realities. Even the Ṭodarānanda , a text attributed to the “Vakil of the Mughal empire,” shows no direct influence from nor engagement with Islam or the Mughal polity: “the evidence shows that…the author did not attempt to adapt his text to sixteenth-century circumstances in Akbar’s India” (Rocher 2016 : 12). In many ways, dharma authors could not have cared less about historical or social norms. Like most scholastic authors, they wrote in “sublime disregard of history” (Kuttner 1980 ). Commentarial tradition does not permit one to simply ignore or weaken a rule without other textual support. Authors try to remain within a self-generated and circumscribed world of the texts, since interference from the outside can only taint the system found in the texts.
However, the fact that commentators were first and foremost scholars who focused on correct interpretation does not mean that they were untouched by historical and social pressures and changes. The root-texts discussed in the previous chapter had a closer connection to customary law than the commentaries, though even they set forth a “jurisprudential reflection on custom” (Olivelle 2005a : xxxix), not a simple record of custom. In all periods, custom exerted an influence on the various genres of Dharmaśāstra. We must remember that root-texts (mūlasmṛti ) continued to be produced in the tradition long after the appearance of formal commentaries and digests. In fact, in some cases, it appears that commentators could create new root-texts and cite them as authoritative in their argumentation, so long as the position represented conformed to an accepted view. For example, several citations in the centuries-long debate over widow-burning (sahagamana ) do not appear except in the commentaries that use them (Brick 2010 ). To us, this fact suggests that commentators could “invent” traditions that condensed prevailing opinions (and possibly practice) on the topic. In other cases, however, commentators descried forged or fabricated rules that supported unacceptable opinions or practices (see Olivelle 1986 –7, II: 88–9). Lariviere (1997 ) has rightly criticized Derrett’s characterization of these new root-texts as “bogus” or “apocryphal,” since many new rules and new texts were in fact accepted within the tradition. The regular instances where innovative rules were also rejected tell us that the tradition maintained internal checks over the unfaithful transmission of its foundational textual material.
In summary, therefore, commentaries reveal social history by accident and indirectly. Commentaries can often be useful sources for contemporary historical and social facts, but it is crucial that we understand that, in most cases, the purpose of the texts was not to update or adjust the tradition to meet the times. One has to read between the lines of commentaries and to corroborate their testimony with other sources in order to glean reliable history. Dharmaśāstra commentaries are direct witnesses only to the legal and religious thought of their own tradition—an influential, perhaps hegemonic, discourse. They should be read primarily in these terms, and only secondarily as potential sources for information about historical and social realities.
No final word can ever be stated about the intentions of the commentators, because they were not always the same. As in any intellectual tradition, we find creative geniuses, great synthesizers, competent imitators, and inept pretenders. Tradition tends to silence most of the latter two groups by not passing down mediocre and incompetent works. At the same time, the commentators worked in different circumstances that certainly shaped the kind of scholarship they produced. Some may have been luxuriantly supported and felt little need to engage with contemporary social issues; others probably felt threatened from within or from outside and thus felt compelled to address pressing social problems in their time. A great scholar such as Raghunandana in sixteenth-century Bengal produced the leading work on ordeals in this tradition, but his work gives no hint that he ever studied ordeals in practice (see Lariviere 1981a ). Conversely, when ten or more highly reputable scholars of Dharmaśāstra voice contrary opinions about the controversial practice of widow-burning over many centuries and constantly citing earlier opinions, the stakes are more than academic (Brick 2010 ). The texts here reflect a change in the moral outlook of the times and provide critical insight into the history of this practice. The conventional idiom of Dharmaśāstra did not allow direct engagement with social history, but in numerous cases, history and society intruded nonetheless. Otherwise, we cannot explain why Mādhava wanted to defend cross-cousin marriage in the first place or why the Laghudharmaprakāśikā defends matrilineal adoption in the only region of India where matriliny was widespread.
Sometime around the tenth century, a short-lived genre of Dharmaśāstra doxography (saṃgraha, mata ) appeared in texts such as the Caturviṃśatimata, Smṛtisaṃgraha and Ṣaṭtriṃśatmata (Kane I: 510, 535–8). 5 These texts paraphrased and summarized dharma topics without direct citation from older material, restating the rules and argumentation from the author’s own perspective. Unfortunately, few complete examples of this doxographical interlude remain, and we know of their existence mostly because they are regularly quoted in the digests. This innovative format did not, however, survive long after the appearance of the new digests of dharma .
Prior to the appearance of the first extant digest (nibandha ), the twelfth-century Kṛtyakalpataru of Lakṣmīdhara, Dharmaśāstra texts generally discounted or dismissed the authority of other texts that were not part of their orthodox tradition, namely the Vedas, the Mīmāṃsā, and the Dharmaśāstras themselves. 6 Purāṇas, for example, are hardly cited at all by the early commentators (tenth century ce or earlier) such as Bhāruci, Asahāya, Viśvarūpa, and Medhātithi (Kane I: 410–11). The digests of dharma , however, were not merely topical rearrangements of older texts. Rather, they took shape primarily through a massive importation of Purāṇa material into a thematically organized collection.
Previously, Purāṇas were often held to be inferior sources of dharma . Consider the verse attributed to Vyāsa and found in several medieval dharma texts, including digests:
ataḥ sa paramo dharmo yo vedād adhigamyate |
avaraḥ sa tu vijñeyo yaḥ purāṇādiṣu sthitaḥ ||
Thus, the highest Law is what is learned from the Veda. What is found in the Purāṇas, etc., however, should be regarded as inferior.
(DhKośa, VaDh , 1.163) 7
In the Tantravārttika of Kumārila, we find a more elaborate dismissal or diminution of the Purāṇas. In this case, Kumārila (ad PMS 1.2.7) lumps the Purāṇas and Itihāsas together as examples of arthavāda , praising or disparaging statements, found even in the Vedas themselves. Arthavāda s are authoritative, according to Kumārila, insofar as and because they help, encourage, or compel people to follow the injunctions or observe the prohibitions stated elsewhere in the Vedas. They thus promote good action and discourage evil acts, calling on people generally to do dharma . On the surface, this analysis gives arthavāda s an authoritative, but supportive role. The category of arthavāda , however, is also widely understood to connote inferior or unimportant statements. The dignity and majesty of true injunctions overwhelms all merely supportive statements.
As we might imagine, some Purāṇas took umbrage at this sweeping categorization, for example, the Nāradīya Purāṇa :
purāneṣv arthavādatvaṃ ye vadanti narādhamāḥ |
tair arjitāni puṇyāni kṣayaṃ yānti dvijottamāḥ ||
samastakarmanirmūlasādhanāni narādhamaḥ |
purāṇāny arthavādena bruvan narakam aśnute ||
O Best of Brahmins, vile men who say that the Purāṇas are merely arthavāda s destroy all the merit they have acquired. The Purāṇas are the means to eradicate all karmas. By calling them mere arthavāda , a vile man receives hell.
(NārP 1.1.57–1.1.59, quoted in Kane V: 927)
The defensiveness of the text here is striking. It is, in any case, clearly a swipe against the Mīmāṃsā view as represented by Kumārila. This text will simply not accept a diminished or inferior status for the Purāṇas. The author feels compelled to condemn (though not to disprove) the perhaps prevailing view of the Mīmāṃsā and their close philosophical partners in the Dharmaśāstra tradition.
Skepticism about the Purāṇas persisted, however. In the twelfth century, Yādava Prakāśa opened his digest of rules for religious renunciation by declaring, “The dharma that I present here has been gathered solely from those sections of their [major Dharmaśāstra authors’] books devoted to the topic of renunciation and not from other sections of those books or from the epics (itihāsa ) and the Purāṇas” (Olivelle 1995a : 30).
In spite of these suspicions, the nibandha genre of Dharmaśāstra embraced the Purāṇas fully. Why? Purāṇas introduced or cemented a discursive and theological presence for a host of religious practices and ideas that had been either peripheral or absent from earlier Dharmaśāstra. Kane points to yātrā s (pilgrimages), vrata s (vows), and bhakti (devotion) all as “developments for which Purāṇas are largely responsible” (I: 412–13). Most or all of these practices are connected to Hindu temples, which had become powerful and widespread throughout India during the second half of the first millennium. When medieval digests “dharma -fied” pilgrimage, vow-taking, devotion, religious gifting, and pūjā , they had necessarily to draw extensively, sometimes exclusively, from Purāṇic sources, because the earlier Dharmaśāstra field did not consider these to be important enough to discuss in great detail, if at all, or because the practices were unknown or did not exist at the time. Huge new areas of dharma received elaborate exposition in the new digests. Other topics such as vyavahāra (legal procedure), āhnika (daily ritual duties), and śrāddha (ancestral offerings) had little need for Purāṇa material and consequently quote little from the Purāṇas.
What motivated dharma authors to incorporate new practices and institutions into their direct scholarly consideration, when they had avoided them for many centuries? To answer this question, we should again point to internal boundary shifts within Hindu traditions. Several commentaries and digests in the period beginning around the twelfth century warn against or dismiss outright the proliferating texts of sectarian groups such as the Pāñcarātras and Pāśupatas, who were also building temple cultures dedicated to a form of worship that we generally call Tantra, based on texts called either Tantras or Āgamas.
The political and economic successes of temple-centered, sectarian communities in the second half of the first millennium ce brought prestige to their Āgamas and theologies. This social and textual success threatened the preeminence of Vedic Brahmanism and its different social organization. Vedic Brahmins were already busy defending their tradition against Purāṇic and Itihāsic Brahmanism, when Āgamic Brahmanism demanded a theological and philosophical refutation of its own. In response, we see a reconciliation of especially the Purāṇic and Vedic Brahmins, an alliance intended to undermine the growing power and position of Tantric Brahmins in temples patronized by rulers and lords of medieval Indian states. The nibandha genre within Dharmaśāstra, therefore, should be explained as a response not so much to the incursions of Islam (see Pollock 1993 : 105–6) as to the growing success of Āgamic Brahmanism and its sectarian temples and monasteries. 8 Dharma authors used the fuller range of religious life, practice, and theology in the Purāṇas and, to a lesser extent, the epics to forge a new orthodoxy for “Vedic” Hinduism.
It is important to note, however, that the rejection of the Pāñcarātras and Pāśupatas in dharma texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (see Aparārka in Olivelle 2016a : 148ff.) yielded to cautious acceptance in the seventeenth century in the Vīramitrodaya of Mitramiśra, a subcommentary on the Mitākṣarā commentary on the Yājñavalkya Dharmaśāstra . Mitramiśra states, “the word ‘treatise’ [in a passage cited from the Bhaviṣya Purāṇa in support of YDh 1.3] should be understood to include the Pañcarātra texts also, because they, too, have authority just like the treatises of Manu and the rest.” 9 Later, relying on another author, he continues:
Taking all this into consideration, Śrīdattopadhyāya strenuously asserts that the claim that the mention of the Pañcarātra in the discussion of daily rites is baseless is itself baseless. Likewise, the idea that the scriptures of the Pāñcarātras, Pāśupatas, and others are indeed authoritative in the portions where they do not contradict the Veda is stated in the Pārijāta and is made with great intensity in the settling of matters approved by all learned men.…even though the Kalpataru says no. 10
Whether or not Mitramiśra’s case can be substantiated, the interest of his argument lies in the fact that he makes it at all. The prestige and power of the Pañcarātra and Pāśupata was growing such that a twelfth-century Dharmaśāstra author could harshly reject them, while a seventeenth-century commentator could not and, in fact, seemed inclined to accept them meaningfully into the scheme of dharma . The intellectual history described here reveals both the internal tensions and negotiations within Hindu theological circles and the propensity for Hindu traditions such as Dharmaśāstra to change through incorporation, accretion, and domestication of other traditions.
Along with this acute pressure to recognize Hindu temples as more than peripheral institutions, Dharmaśāstra authors in the twelfth century ce also faced a palpable uncertainty in the state of their own textual tradition (Brick 2015 : 15–21). Many of the “root-texts” of Dharmaśāstra—Bṛhaspati, Kātyāyana, Vyāsa, Pitāmaha, Śankha-Likhita, and so on—are known to us only through their citation in the medieval digests and commentaries. A few famous texts have full and multiple commentaries through which we now have complete root-texts. In most cases, however, we only know authors’ works through the extensive citations found in medieval digests. That fact suggests that an additional motivation for the digesting of Dharmaśāstra material beginning in the twelfth century ce was a fear of losing core teachings of the tradition. The textual foundations of Dharmaśāstra may have been in a precarious situation and the digest writers did the philological work to preserve important texts that might otherwise have been lost forever. Digest authors, therefore, may also be seen as producing and promoting a canon of Dharmaśāstra arranged by major theme. The same impulse may have underlain the doxography/summary genre in the tenth century or so, but it was the digest format that succeeded in saving key texts from the uncertainty that reigned in this period.
Turning now to the authors themselves, the most comprehensive review of both major and minor commentators and digest writers will long remain the first volume of Kane’s History of Dharmaśāstra . He provides details of the commentators’ biography, date, extant works, manuscripts, style, and contribution. Here, we have selected just five whom we consider to be representative of the tradition, either because the author made a unique contribution or because he exemplifies an authorial type.
Perhaps the most creative and intriguing commentator in the Dharmaśāstra tradition was also one of the earliest. Medhātithi, son of Vīrasvāmin, hailed from Kashmir and lived in the latter half of the ninth century ce . His complete commentary on the Laws of Manu was later known simply as “The Commentary” (Olivelle 2016a : 122). His work is referred to in many later dharma texts with great frequency and deference. A new copy of his commentary was ordered by King Madanapāla in the fourteenth century ce in order to complete a damaged, partial copy in his library (Bühler 1886 : cxxv). Such restoration (jīrṇoddhāra ) indicates the continuing importance of Medhātithi’s work even centuries later.
Where some commentators remain content with rudimentary commentarial services such as word glosses, syntactical reconstructions, and breaking up compounds, Medhātithi elaborates, often in considerable detail, both on the likely motivations behind a rule or line of thought and on its religious, legal, or philosophical implications. Medhātithi’s reputation, therefore, derives from the fact that his “commentary” is also a text of great originality and, as such, exerted great influence over the later tradition. Derrett captures his distinctive quality when he writes, “in the course of his exposition he continually brings in views opposed to his own, and disposes of them by reasoning, rather than by the citation of conflicting texts from other smṛti s, which is, all too often, the method adopted by his successors in the science” (1967 : 176). In other words, Medhātithi had influence and renown because he was far more than a harmonizer of texts.
In several places, Medhātithi deflates the pompous and literalist claim that all dharma is based on the Vedas. Drawing both on general word usage and on reasoned argument, he instead differentiates several nuanced meanings of dharma , most of which bear no connection to the Vedic texts as such. Laws for specific groups such as families, castes, guilds, and regions are dharma s (MDh 1.118); so also are actions that bring benefits of a worldly nature; so also are the reasoned pronouncements of a sage; and the norms accepted by good people as if they were based on the Vedas (MDh 2.6). Even the acts and edicts of a king must be counted as dharma even though “not all of them have the Veda as their root” (Olivelle 2016a : 138).
From the other side, Medhātithi, more than many dharma authors, puts clear emphasis on reasoning as essential to ethics, meaning what good people should do. Such reasoning moves between common sense and case-based reasoning in a legal sense. When dealing with documents as legal evidence, for example, he writes, “it is not possible to invalidate true facts of the situation simply because they contradict a statement in a text” (Olivelle 2016a : 239). Time and again, Medhātithi deftly moves between careful analysis of the textual norms, considerations of public opinion, and logical argumentation. The result is a pragmatic jurisprudence that conforms to a realist approach to law.
One final aspect of Medhātithi’s achievement deserves attention. He wrote, as Derrett (1976b : 176) put it, “prior to the purāṇic contamination of the dharmaśāstra .” As we have seen, the acceptance and appropriation of the Purāṇas as standard sources of Dharmaśāstra material ushered in major changes to the tradition as a whole. For contemporary scholars, the historical value of Medhātithi’s work derives not only from its inherent intellectual merits as religious jurisprudence but also from the fact that it captures an understanding of dharma in Dharmaśāstra that precedes many critical innovations in and expansions of the overall system of dharma .
The most influential commentary in the Dharmaśāstra tradition was the twelfth-century Mitākṣarā (Concise Summary ) by Vijñāneśvara, an explanation of the Laws of Yājñavalkya . Born in the Bharadvāja lineage (gotra ), he was the son of a teacher named Padmanābha-bhaṭṭa and the student of Uttama. He served at the court of the Cālukya king Vikramāditya VI (d. 1127 ce ) and lived in the capital city of Kalyāṇa, today’s Basavakalyan in northeastern Karnataka. Vijñāneśvara described himself as an ascetic and scholar (yogin, paṇḍita, paramahaṃsa, parivrājaka ) and not as a lawyer or jurist, as so many colonial-period authors asserted.
In Kane’s estimation, the significance of the Mitākṣarā is equal “to that of the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali in grammar or to that of the Kāvyaprakāśa of Mammaṭa in poetics” (Kane I: 599). Like these other watershed texts in their fields, Vijñāneśvara’s distillation of Hindu religious law was not the first, but the best, summary statement of the received wisdom about dharma (Davis 2015 ). As far as the tradition was concerned, Vijñāneśvara struck the right balance between the scholastic harmonization of prior texts and the reasoned interpretation of difficult legal and religious principles. For the most part, his comments aim to elucidate the full meaning of a rule through the standard repertory of word glosses, syntactical clarifications, brief illustrative examples, and parallel citations from other root-texts. Such analysis he provides consistently over the course of the entire root-text. In several places, however, he goes further by providing long discussions of technical matters, contradictory texts, and central issues of dharma .
Vijñāneśvara’s genius seems to lie in the fact that he can make innovative or controversial ideas seem natural, as though they were long part of the tradition. Like Medhātithi, Vijñāneśvara’s work is a commentary that follows the structure and logic of its source. Unlike Medhātithi, Vijñāneśvara also quotes extensively from many other Dharmaśāstra texts both in support of his interpretation and as a way to expound on related topics not expressly addressed in the root-text. In this way, his work bridges the generic gap between commentary and digest. Though Yājñavalkya says nothing about inheritance by birth (certainly the most famous doctrine in the Mitākṣarā ), Vijñāneśvara (at YDh 2.113–4) skillfully weaves together a host of other rules of dharma and principles of Mīmāṃsā to show, first, that ownership and property arise from worldly or social convention and, second, that partition at the time of inheritance must therefore divide what the heirs already own by virtue of their birth in the family (Rocher and Rocher 2001 ). In the same way, Vijñāneśvara provides illuminating exegeses of kinship, caste, ancestral rites, legal procedure, and expiation, without overwhelming his source.
The influence of the Mitākṣarā is shown first by the fact that it is the only Dharmaśāstra text to have been rendered into vernacular languages of India, namely Tamil and Telugu, plus Persian. Examples of Dharmaśāstra not in Sanskrit are exceedingly rare. More directly, H. T. Colebrooke, the dominant British judge and Orientalist in Calcutta in the early nineteenth century, named the Mitākṣarā and the Dāyabhāga of Jīmūtavāhana as the key texts of two “schools of Hindu Law.” Rocher (2012 : 120) has shown that this division of Dharmaśāstra into “schools” was a colonial invention. Nevertheless, it was no accident that Colebrooke selected the Mitākṣarā as the principal text of “Hindu law” for all of India except Bengal. Though his division was artificial (mirroring the traditional divisions of Islamic law), Colebrooke simply echoed the high regard and widespread influence of the Mitākṣarā in many parts of India.
Among the most voluminous and wide-ranging works of Dharmaśāstra and the very earliest surviving examples of the nibandha or “digest” genre is the encyclopedic Kṛtyakalpataru (The Wishing Tree of Duties ). In fact, so far as we know, its author, Lakṣmīdhara, invented the digest form within Dharmaśāstra and his work thus ushers in a major new period in the history of the tradition. Lakṣmīdhara identifies himself as a high-ranking minister of a king Govindacandra, whom scholars have conclusively identified as a ruler of the same name belonging to the Gāhaḍavāla dynasty, centered in modern-day Kannauj. Because epigraphic evidence allows us to establish the period of Govindacandra’s reign as roughly 1114–54 ce , Lakṣmīdhara’s work can confidently be dated to this same period.
As a treatise on Dharmaśāstra, the Kṛtyakalpataru is divided into fourteen large “books” or kāṇḍas , which in their printed editions range in length from 182 to 834 pages. Thus, taken in its entirety, it is a massive work, surpassed in size among Dharmaśāstra works by only the seventeenth-century digest Vīramitrodaya . It likewise covers an extremely wide array of topics, as is indicated by the titles of the twelve books of the Kṛtyakalpataru that have been conclusively determined:
Unfortunately, of these twelve books, the Śāntikāṇḍa has not yet been edited and published. Moreover, the identities of the seventh and ninth books remain unclear. The printed edition of the Pratiṣṭhākāṇḍa (“Book on Image Consecration”) likely corresponds to either a substantial part or the entirety of one of these two books, while the other missing book probably deals with the topic of penance (prāyaścitta ) (Brick 2015 : 2–3). In any case, given the breadth of topics that it treats in great detail, one can rightly characterize the Kṛtyakalpataru as a virtual encyclopedia of orthodox Brahmanical dharma during the medieval period.
Importantly, many of the topics dealt with in Lakṣmīdhara’s work—such as particularly religious vows, pilgrimage, and image consecration—receive scant treatment within the Dharmaśāstras themselves, but are subjects of much discussion in the Purāṇas—a class of texts often disparaged in earlier Dharmaśāstra texts, as we have seen. Thus, in composing his books dealing with these topics, Lakṣmīdhara necessarily cites quite heavily from various Purāṇas. And, insofar as he does this and, thereby, incorporates Purāṇic texts and subjects into Dharmaśāstric discourse for the first time, his Kṛtyakalpataru represents a significant departure from the preceding tradition.
The other obvious way in which the Kṛtyakalpataru significantly departs from earlier works of medieval Dharmaśāstra is its general dearth of commentarial passages. Indeed, although the Kṛtyakalpataru contains a significant number of commentarial glosses in some places, as well as occasionally more substantial exegesis, it generally contains so little in the way of commentary that this could hardly have been the text’s primary purpose. Instead, it seems to be, first and foremost, an authoritative, fairly comprehensive, and topically arranged collection of smṛti s on dharma , rather than an exegetical work per se. For this reason, the Kṛtyakalpataru must also be understood as a response to widespread uncertainty regarding the contents of these Brahmanical scriptures during the early second millennium.
Devaṇabhaṭṭa—whose name is also sometimes spelled Devaṇṇabhaṭṭa or shortened to simply Devaṇa—is the author of an early and especially erudite and illuminating digest on dharma called the Smṛticandrikā (Moonlight on the Tradition ). Sadly, we have even less historical information about Devaṇabhaṭṭa than we do about the authors of many other nibandhas . One major reason for this is the absence of introductory verses and closing remarks of the type found in numerous other digests and commentaries, wherein authors give at least some basic information about themselves, such as the names of their patron kings and home-cities. Despite the general lack of information regarding Devaṇabhaṭṭa himself, however, his work can be confidently dated to the period 1150–1250 ce , based upon its references to earlier commentaries and the citations of it found in certain later works. Moreover, Devaṇabhaṭṭa was undoubtedly of South Indian origin, as is indicated, for instance, by the Smṛticandrikā ’s particularly strong influence in the region and its ardent defense of cross-cousin marriage—a distinctively South Indian custom. 11 Unfortunately, however, Devaṇabhaṭṭa’s more precise provenance remains uncertain.
Like the earlier Kṛtyakalpataru , the Smṛticandrikā is divided into a number of lengthy books (kāṇḍa ). But unlike the Kṛtyakalpataru , it provides no clear indication as to the total number of these books. At present, five books of the Smṛticandrikā have been published, which may or may not comprise all of the work’s total kāṇḍas . 12 These published books of the Smṛticandrikā are as follows:
From the above descriptions, it would seem that the life of a typical twice-born man, beginning with conception and ending with death and its ritual ramifications, provides the basic underlying structure of Devaṇabhaṭṭa’s work. Furthermore, as one can see, the Smṛticandrikā does not treat in detail a number of subjects, such as gifting, vows, and liberation from cyclical rebirth, to which the Kṛtyakalpataru devotes entire separate books. And it is primarily for this reason that the Smṛticandrikā is a much shorter work, although still large. It is noteworthy, however, that like the Kṛtyakalpataru , the Smṛticandrikā appears to have an especially strong interest in the adjudication of lawsuits (vyavahāra ), for both works contain exceptionally long books on the topic.
Aside from the breadth of topics covered, probably the most striking difference between the Smṛticandrikā and the Kṛtyakalpataru is the presence of abundant and tightly argued exegetical passages throughout the former work, whereas such passages are largely absent from Lakṣmīdhara’s digest, as mentioned above. Consequently, among the surviving nibandhas that attempt to cover something approaching the entirety of Brahmanical dharma , the Smṛticandrikā is the first to incorporate commentary of the type one finds in the celebrated earlier works of Medhātithi and Vijñāneśvara. Devaṇabhaṭṭa should, therefore, be regarded as one of the most learned and creative authors in Dharmaśāstra. His organization of topics and commentarial elaboration are unsurpassed in the tradition, a model of careful philological synthesis and lucid exposition.
Like his predecessors Lakṣmīdhara and Devaṇabhaṭṭa, Nīlakaṇṭha Bhaṭṭa is the author of a massive, multivolume digest that treats in detail all or at least most of the major topics falling within the broad rubric of Brahmanical dharma . Nīlakaṇṭha identifies his royal patron as the minor king Bhagavantadeva, who ruled the small North Indian city of Bhareha near the confluence of the Chambal and Yamuna rivers. And it is no doubt in honor of his royal patron that Nīlakaṇṭha entitled his digest the Bhagavantabhāskara (Bhagavanta the Sun ). Playing on the sun metaphor in his digest’s title, he then referred to each of its various books as a mayūkha , which means “ray of light” or “beam.” In total, the Bhagavantabhāskara consists of twelve such mayūkhas (“rays”). These are:
In addition to the Bhagavantabhāskara , Nīlakaṇṭha also wrote a work on judicial procedure called the Vyavahāratattva , which seems to be an abridgment of his earlier Vyavahāramayūkha .
Compared with most authors of Dharmaśāstra works, the personal history of Nīlakaṇṭha can be constructed in unusual detail. 13 He hailed from the well-known Bhaṭṭa family of North Indian Brahmins, which is famous for the many learned and prolific Sanskrit scholars that it has produced. Of particular relevance in this regard is Nīlakaṇṭha’s paternal first cousin, Kamalākara, who wrote several well-known works on Dharmaśāstra, including the Nirṇayasindhu , a highly influential general treatise on the topic, and the Śūdrakamalākara , a fairly novel text that focuses on the rights and duties of Śūdras. Based upon various pieces of evidence, including the dates of some of his relatives, Nīlakaṇṭha’s literary activity can be confidently dated to the first half of the seventeenth century.
Thus, Nīlakaṇṭha lived and wrote at the height of the Mughal Empire and in a location not far removed from the seat of Mughal power. Bearing this in mind, it is striking—at least to those unaccustomed to Brahmanical literature’s ubiquitous silence on contemporaneous events—that his work says essentially nothing about Islam or the subordinate position of Hindu monarchs at the time. To the contrary, judging by its form and content, the Bhagavantabhāskara could have been written centuries earlier and virtually anywhere in the Indian subcontinent.
Despite its typical silence on historical matters, Nīlakaṇṭha’s work, along with many others, shows the continuing vitality of older Dharmaśāstra literary forms and practices well into the seventeenth century, even in those areas of South Asia where Islam had become the dominant religion of royal power. Although by no means a radically innovative text, the Bhagavantabhāskara is, nevertheless, a work of deep erudition that regularly displays thoughtful and original engagement with the smṛti s and earlier commentaries. Nīlakaṇṭha stands in for comparable works of the early modern period (Ṭodaramalla and Mitramiśra), during which North India in particular experienced a renaissance of Sanskrit learning that has only begun to be revealed again.