In this first part of the sourcebook, I take up the issues arising from what Hart (2012) called the rules of recognition and change: broadly speaking, the epistemological issues relating to law and dharma. In the following eight chapters are extracts from twenty-one authors spanning about one thousand years, from 300 B.C.E. to 1300 C.E. These authors represent four intellectual traditions: the science of dharma, Sanskrit grammar, political science, and Vedic exegesis. Although writing from different perspectives, all deal with dharma and its epistemology and shed light on scholarly engagement and debates surrounding this significant issue in the intellectual history of classical India.
The authors presented in the first five chapters, with the exception of the grammarian Patanjali and the political scientist Kautilya, are considered by the later tradition of the science of dharma to have written authoritative treatises falling with the scriptural category of “texts of recollection” (smṛti). Even though the authors themselves engage in vigorous debate and defend particular positions with respect to the epistemological question, their own works have become scripturally authoritative and the basis for the scholarly explorations and debates of later authors and commentators presented in the three subsequent chapters.
