Dharma Shastras

How to bathe, marry, mourn, repay a debt, divide an inheritance and atone for a wrong — two thousand years of Hindu writing on right conduct and law, and the long argument about it that still goes on.

The Dharmaśāstras are “the teaching on dharma” — the tradition’s books of conduct and law. They are among the most practical texts in the whole library, and the most argued over. The page on Dharma has already set out what dharma is and the four classical sources for knowing it — Veda, remembered tradition, the conduct of good people and conscience. This page opens the second of those sources: the law books themselves.

One warning first. “Law book” can mislead. As the legal historian Donald R. Davis Jr. argues, the Dharmaśāstra is less a criminal code handed down by kings than a vision of the good life of the householder — how a person should live within family, caste, village and guild. Courts, crimes and punishments are only one part of it.

From ritual manuals to law books

The genre grew in stages, each building on the one before. Tap each link in the chain:

The Dharmasūtras grew out of the Vedic schools; two, the Āpastamba and Baudhāyana, survive as parts of complete Kalpasūtras of the Taittirīya branch of the Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda, still dominant in South India. Their authority came from that Vedic home.

The great Smṛtis

The verse Smṛtis became the classics of the field. Open each:

मनुManuMānava Dharmaśāstra

About 2,700 verses in twelve chapters, framed as the teaching of Manu, first ancestor of humankind. The most famous and most comprehensive law book — covering creation, the student, the householder, food and purity, women, kingship, the courts, mixed castes, penance and rebirth. Olivelle dates it to around the 2nd century CE.

याज्ञYājñavalkyaYājñavalkya Smṛti

A shorter, better-organised work of about 1,000 verses, probably from the 4th–5th century CE. Its three books — conduct, legal procedure and penance — became the standard way of dividing the subject. Through Vijñāneśvara’s commentary on it, it became the most influential law book in practice.

नारदNāradaNārada Smṛti

The one purely legal Smṛti: it deals almost entirely with courts, evidence and the titles of law, with little on ritual. Its careful treatment of procedure makes it a favourite of legal historians.

पराशParāśaraParāśara Smṛti

A later, shorter work on conduct and penance that claims to be the law book for our age. It is known for gentler rules on some points, and for a verse that names a different law book for each age of the world.

That verse shows that the tradition itself knew its rules had changed over time:

कृते तु मानवा धर्मास्त्रेतायां गौतमाः स्मृताः ।
द्वापरे शाङ्खलिखिताः कलौ पाराशराः स्मृताः ॥ kṛte tu mānavā dharmās tretāyāṃ gautamāḥ smṛtāḥ,
dvāpare śāṅkha-likhitāḥ kalau pārāśarāḥ smṛtāḥ In the Kṛta age the laws of Manu hold; in the Tretā, those of Gautama; in the Dvāpara, those of Śaṅkha and Likhita; in the Kali age, those of Parāśara. Parāśara Smṛti, chapter 1

For the ages themselves, see Time & Cosmology.

What the law books cover

Following the Yājñavalkya Smṛti, the subject is usually divided in three:

  1. Ācāra — conductDaily life and ritual: the stages of life, the saṃskāras from birth to marriage, food, purity and impurity, gifts, ancestor rites, the duties of each varṇa.
  2. Vyavahāra — legal procedureThe king’s court, judges, witnesses and evidence, and the “eighteen titles of law” listed in Manu’s eighth chapter — debts, deposits, partnerships, wages, boundary disputes, assault, theft, the duties of husband and wife, inheritance and more.
  3. Prāyaścitta — penanceHow a wrong is set right: fasting, gifts, pilgrimage, recitation — expiation for sin, as distinct from punishment by the king.

Custom and the local

The law books never claimed to settle everything. They repeatedly defer to the customs of regions, castes, families and guilds — deśa-dharma, jāti-dharma, kula-dharma. The Gautama Dharmasūtra accepts the laws of regions, castes and families as authoritative wherever they do not contradict the Veda, and Manu (8.41) tells the king to learn the laws of castes, regions, guilds and families before giving judgement.

One example matters especially for Tamil readers. The Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra (1.2) notes practices peculiar to the south — among them marrying the daughter of one’s maternal uncle or paternal aunt — which northern authorities condemned. Baudhāyana records the debate — some say each region may follow its own custom; Gautama disagrees — without clearly settling it. Cross-cousin marriage remained common in Tamil families for centuries afterwards, and modern Indian law still allows such marriages where custom permits them.

For Davis, this is the heart of the matter: in practice, Hindu law lived in the rules of local communities — castes, merchant guilds, temples, villages — with the Dharmaśāstra as a learned framework that recognised, organised and sometimes corrected them.

Commentators and digests

No one in medieval India simply looked up a verse of Manu and applied it. The law was read through commentators who reconciled conflicting texts and adapted old rules to new times:

Commentators also developed the idea of kalivarjya — practices allowed in earlier ages but “to be avoided in the Kali age” — an elegant way of retiring old rules without saying the scripture was wrong.

The Manusmṛti: revered and rejected

No Hindu text is more contested. The same book contains verses that many Hindus quote with love and verses that many find indefensible — sometimes on the same subject. On women, for example:

यत्र नार्यस्तु पूज्यन्ते रमन्ते तत्र देवताः ।
यत्रैतास्तु न पूज्यन्ते सर्वास्तत्राफलाः क्रियाः ॥ yatra nāryas tu pūjyante ramante tatra devatāḥ,
yatraitās tu na pūjyante sarvās tatrāphalāḥ kriyāḥ Where women are honoured, there the gods rejoice; where they are not honoured, every rite is fruitless. Manusmṛti 3.56 In context the verse is about a household honouring its women with gifts and kindness. On why this text is contested, see On difficult texts.
पिता रक्षति कौमारे भर्ता रक्षति यौवने ।
रक्षन्ति स्थविरे पुत्रा न स्त्री स्वातन्त्र्यमर्हति ॥ pitā rakṣati kaumāre bhartā rakṣati yauvane,
rakṣanti sthavire putrā na strī svātantryam arhati Her father guards her in childhood, her husband in youth, her sons in old age; a woman is not fit for independence. Manusmṛti 9.3 Quoted here so the reader can see plainly what the text says. Many Hindus reject this rule outright; see On difficult texts.

On caste the book is harsher still. It assigns the śūdra the single duty of serving the three higher varṇas (1.91), excludes women and śūdras from Vedic learning, and in its eighth chapter sets punishments that rise steeply the lower the offender’s caste and the higher the victim’s — such as cutting out the tongue of a śūdra who insults a twice-born man. Those placed outside the varṇa order altogether are treated with contempt. See Varna & Jati.

On 25 December 1927, during the Mahad satyagraha for Dalit access to a public water tank, B. R. Ambedkar and his followers publicly burned a copy of the Manusmṛti as the symbol of caste oppression. The day is still marked by many Dalit and Ambedkarite groups. How should Hindus today read the book? Three answers are heard:

Manu is authoritative smṛti, the first among law books. Its rules belong to a whole social and cosmic order and should be read through the classical commentators, who already softened and adapted them; outsiders who quote single verses misread it.

Historians add a further point: before the British, Manu was a revered scholarly text, not a code that courts mechanically enforced. Its sharp modern prominence owes much to colonial rule.

From sūtra to statute

In 1772 Warren Hastings, governor of Bengal, ordered that in cases of inheritance, marriage, caste and religious usage, Hindus should be judged by “the Shaster” and Muslims by Islamic law. British judges needed a text, so they made one. The milestones:

  1. c. 3rd–1st c. BCEThe DharmasūtrasĀpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana and Vasiṣṭha, in prose, within the Vedic schools.
  2. c. 2nd–6th c. CEThe great SmṛtisManu, then Yājñavalkya and Nārada, in verse.
  3. c. 9th–17th c.Commentaries and digestsMedhātithi, the Mitākṣarā, the Dāyabhāga, and the great nibandhas.
  4. 1772–1776Hastings’s planPaṇḍits compile a digest for the British courts; N. B. Halhed’s English version appears as A Code of Gentoo Laws (1776).
  5. 1794Jones translates ManuSir William Jones publishes Institutes of Hindu Law: or, the Ordinances of Menu — and Manu becomes, in British eyes, “the” Hindu law code.
  6. 1810Two schools of inheritanceH. T. Colebrooke translates the Mitākṣarā and Dāyabhāga on inheritance. Courts apply the Dāyabhāga in Bengal and the Mitākṣarā almost everywhere else.
  7. 1955–56The Hindu CodeIndependent India replaces classical law with four statutes on marriage, succession, guardianship, and adoption and maintenance.

The result was “Anglo-Hindu law”: a fixed, text-based system run by British judges, which froze local variety and gave Brahmanical texts more power over ordinary people’s lives than they had often had before.

Modern law

After independence, Ambedkar — now India’s first Law Minister — drafted a single Hindu Code Bill. Fierce opposition stalled it, and he resigned in 1951. It passed in pieces: the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, which ended polygamy and allowed divorce, and in 1956 the Hindu Succession, Minority and Guardianship, and Adoptions and Maintenance Acts. In 2005 an amendment gave daughters the same birthright in Mitākṣarā family property as sons. Classical Dharmaśāstra no longer governs Hindu family life in Indian courts.

In Malaysia, Hindu marriages and divorces fall under the civil Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, which covers all non-Muslims. What survives of the Dharmaśāstra for most Hindus today is not law but life: the saṃskāras, the rules of mourning and auspicious times, and a vocabulary of duty, penance and right conduct.

Check your knowledge:

Quick check

The Dharmasūtras grew out of which kind of text?

The Kalpasūtras, the ritual manuals of each Vedic school — two Dharmasūtras survive as parts of complete Kalpasūtras.

Which Smṛti deals almost entirely with courts and legal procedure?

The Nārada Smṛti, the one purely legal Smṛti.

Who translated Manu into English in 1794?

Sir William Jones, as Institutes of Hindu Law. Hastings commissioned the earlier digest.

Where did British courts apply the Dāyabhāga rather than the Mitākṣarā?

Bengal (and Assam) — Jīmūtavāhana was a Bengali jurist.

Questions people often ask

Do Hindus have to follow the Manusmṛti?

No. It is one law book among many, and Smṛti has always been held to be changeable in a way Śruti is not. Most Hindus today have never read it; many reject it; very few treat it as binding. Even classically, custom, commentators and later Smṛtis overrode it on many points.

Were these laws ever actually enforced?

Partly, and unevenly. Kings and local assemblies drew on Dharmaśāstra, but much law in practice was the custom of castes, guilds and villages. Scholars still debate how far the texts described real courts and how far they set out an ideal.

॥ Pause and reflect

  1. Which customs in your own family come from “the books,” and which from community or region?
  2. How do you hold a tradition that contains both “where women are honoured, the gods rejoice” and “a woman is not fit for independence”?
  3. What does Ambedkar’s burning of the Manusmṛti ask of Hindus today?

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Key terms on this page

Sources & further reading