The Laws of Manu

Despite Asoka's promotion of the Buddhist principle of Dharma, or the Law of Righteousness, the majority of India's population remained true to more traditional Hindu ways and beliefs, which included acceptance of the caste system and the notion that dharma defines caste duties, as Lord Krishna taught in the Bhagavad Gita. For most Hindus, dharma became concrete in the innumerable rituals that Asoka found so useless and in Indian civilization's countless forms of mandated social behavior. Faith, worship, and social duty all sprang from dharma. The earliest extant codification of the Sacred Law of dharma is the Laws of Manu, which was compiled between the first century B.C.E. and the second or third century C.E. In Hindu mythology Manu was the primeval human being, the father of humanity, and its first king. In the Vedas he appears as the founder of all human social order and the original teacher of dharma, having been instructed in the Sacred Law by Brahman. Tradition also regarded him as an Indian Utnapishtim or Noah, the sole survivor of a catastrophic flood, after which he created a woman, through whom he generated the human species. The anonymous compilers of the Laws of Manu claimed that the rules and regulations contained in this code were universal and timeless. Each law was a manifestation of dharma, passed down uncorrupted from Brahman through Manu. In reality, this collection mirrors 2,500 years of Indian social history and religious thought, and consequently contains what seem to the outside viewer to be numerous contradictions. These apparent discrepancies, however, are readily integrated in a cultural complex predicated on the idea that spiritual truth has infinite manifestations. The selections here illustrate the two major determinants of classical Indian society: caste and gender. As far as we can ascertain, class and gender distinctions of one sort or another were common to all ancient civilizations, but the caste system was unique to India. The English word caste derives from the Portuguese casta, which means "pure." Hindus use two different Sanskrit words for caste: varna (color) and jati (birth). Varna refers only to the four major social-religious divisions that "The Hymn to Purusha" enumerates: Brahmins (priests); Kshatriyas (warriors); Vaisyas (farmers, artisans, and merchants); Sudras (workers). These classifications of Indian society possibly resulted from the Aryans' attempt to separate themselves from the darker-skinned natives whom they conquered. The jati system, which today includes more than 3,000 identifiable groupings, was not fully developed until around the Gupta period, long after the Aryans had disappeared into India's general population. Jatis are hereditary occupations, each with its own dharma. Hindus generally classify jatis as subdivisions of the varna system and steps in the ladder of reincarnation.

The Laws of Manu

VARNA

The Brahmin, the Kshatriya, and the Vaisya castes are the twice-born ones,[1] but the fourth, the Sudra, has one birth only; there is no fifth caste....

To Brahmins he[2] assigned teaching and studying the Vedas, sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting of alms.

The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Vedas, and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures;

The Vaisya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Vedas, to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land.

One occupation only the lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly...these other three castes.

JATIS

From a male Sudra are born an Ayogava, a Kshattri, and a Kandala, the lowest of men, by Vaisya, Kshatriya, and Brahmin females respectively, sons who owe their origin to a confusion of the castes.[3]...

Killing fish to Nishadas; carpenters' work to the Ayogava; to Medas, Andhras, Kunkus, and Madgus, the slaughter of wild animals....

But the dwellings of Kandalas...shall be outside the village....

Their dress shall be the garments of the dead, they shall eat their food from broken dishes, black iron shall be their ornaments, and they must always wander from place to place.

A man who fulfills a religious duty, shall not seek intercourse with them; their [Kandala] transactions shall be among themselves, and their marriages with their equals....

At night they shall not walk about in villages and in towns.

By day they may go about for the purpose of their work, distinguished by marks at the king's command, and they shall carry out the corpses of persons who have no relatives; that is a settled rule.

By the king's order they shall always execute the criminals, in accordance with the law, and they shall take for themselves the clothes, the beds, and the ornaments of such criminals.

DHARMA

A king who knows the sacred law must inquire into the laws of castes [jatis], of districts, of guilds, and of families, and settle the peculiar law of each....

Among the several occupations the most commendable are, teaching the Vedas for a Brahmin, protecting the people for a Kshatriya, and trade for a Vaisya.

But a Brahmin, unable to subsist by his peculiar occupations just mentioned, may live according to the law applicable to Kshatriyas; for the latter is next to him in rank....

A man of low caste [varna] who through covetousness lives by the occupations of a higher one, the king shall deprive of his property and banish.

It is better to discharge one's own duty incompletely than to perform completely that of another; for he who lives according to the law of another caste is instantly excluded from his own.

A Vaisya who is unable to subsist by his own duties, may even maintain himself by a Sudra's mode of life, avoiding however acts forbidden to him, and he should give it up, when he is able to do so....

Abstention from injuring creatures, veracity, abstention from unlawfully appropriating the goods of others, purity, and control of the organs,[4] Manu has declared to be the summary of the law for the four castes.

THE NATURE OF WOMEN

It is the nature of women to seduce men in this world; for that reason the wise are never unguarded in the company of females....

For women no rite is performed with sacred texts, thus the law is settled; women who are destitute of strength and destitute of the knowledge of Vedic texts are as impure as falsehood itself; that is a fixed rule.

HONORING WOMEN

Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased; but where they are not honored, no sacred rite yields rewards.

Where the female relations live in grief, the family soon wholly perishes; but that family where they are not unhappy ever prospers.

FEMALE PROPERTY RIGHTS

A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is acquired for him to whom they belong....

What was given before the nuptial fire, what was given on the bridal procession, what was given in token of love, and what was received from her brother, mother, or father, that is called the six-fold property of a woman.

Such property, as well as a gift subsequent and what was given to her by her affectionate husband, shall go to her offspring, even if she dies in the lifetime of her husband....

But when the mother has died, all the uterine[5] brothers and the uterine sisters shall equally divide the mother's estate.

A WOMAN'S DEPENDENCE

In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.

She must not seek to separate herself from her father, husband, or sons; by leaving them she would make both her own and her husband's families contemptible....

Him to whom her father may give her, or her brother with the father's permission, she shall obey as long as he lives, and when he is dead, she must not insult his memory.

BETROTHAL

No father who knows the law must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who, through avarice, takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring....

Three years let a damsel wait,[6] though she be marriageable,[7] but after that time let her choose for herself a bridegroom of equal caste and rank. If, being not given in marriage, she herself seeks a husband, she incurs no guilt, nor does he whom she weds.

MARRIAGE AND ITS DUTIES

To be mothers were women created, and to be fathers men; religious rites, therefore, are ordained in the Vedas to be performed by the husband together with the wife....

No sacrifice, no vow, no fast must be performed by women apart from their husbands; if a wife obeys her husband, she will for that reason alone be exalted in heaven.[8]...

By violating her duty towards her husband, a wife is disgraced in this world, after death she enters the womb of a jackal, and is tormented by diseases as punishment for her sin....

Let the husband employ his wife in the collection and expenditure of his wealth, in keeping everything clean, in the fulfillment of religious duties, in the preparation of his food, and in looking after the household utensils....

Drinking spirituous liquor, associating with wicked people, separation from the husband, rambling abroad, sleeping at unseasonable hours, and dwelling in other men's houses, are the six causes of the ruin of women....

Offspring, religious rites, faithful service, highest conjugal happiness and heavenly bliss for the ancestors and oneself, depend on one's wife alone....

"Let mutual fidelity continue until death"...may be considered as the summary of the highest law for husband and wife.

Let man and woman, united in marriage, constantly exert themselves, that they may not be disunited and may not violate their mutual fidelity.

DIVORCE

For one year let a husband bear with a wife who hates him; but after a year let him deprive her of her property and cease to cohabit with her....

But she who shows aversion towards a mad or outcaste[9] husband, a eunuch,[10] one destitute of manly strength, or one afflicted with such diseases as punish crimes,[11] shall neither be cast off nor be deprived of her property....

A barren[12] wife may be superseded[13] in the eighth year, she whose children all die in the tenth, she who bears only daughters in the eleventh, but she who is quarrelsome without delay.

But a sick wife who is kind to her husband and virtuous in her conduct, may be superseded only with her own consent and must never be disgraced.

[1] One's second birth is initiation into the recitation of the Vedas. Only men can be twice-born.
[2] Brahman.
[3] This explains the existence of certain low-born, or unclean, jatis; they originated in mythic time as the result of illicit unions between people of different castes. The greatest profanation of all was when a male Sudra defiled (had sexual intercourse with) a female Brahmin, and the consequence was the origin of the Kandala jati--the basest of all jatis.
[4] Control of all the senses and especially one's sexual drives.
[5] All natural siblings (born from her uterus).
[6] To be offered in marriage by her father or brother.
[7] Twelve was a common age of marriage for women; men tended to wait until their twenties.
[8] While waiting for the next incarnation on the karmic journey of release from the bonds of matter, a soul can be assigned to one of an infinite number of heavens or hells. Thus, depending on how well or poorly a person followed dharma, there was a double reward or punishment: a heaven or a hell followed by incarnation into a higher or lower caste or even a lower life form. Compare this with Virgil's ideas regarding the afterlife and reincarnation (source 30).
[9] He has so egregiously violated the dharma of his caste (varna) that he has been made an outcaste--for example, a Brahmin who knowingly receives food or a gift from a Kandala or other unclean person.
[10] Sexually impotent.
[11] A disease incurred by reason of a sin in a previous incarnation (the law of karma). Hindu society evolved complex and lengthy lists of diseases and their corresponding sins.
[12] Childless.
[13] Replaced as primary wife by a second wife.

Credits: B. Guehler, trans., The Laws of Manu, in F. Max Mueller, ed., The Sacred Books of the East, 50 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879-1910), vol. 25, pp. 24, 69, 84-85, 195-197, 260-326, 329-330, 343-344, 370-371, 402-404, 413-416, 420, 423, passim.

Address the following questions:

1) The lowest-ranking jatis are composed of people known as Untouchables. Why are they called that, and what manner of life do they lead? What is there about their occupations that other Hindus find so offensive? Under what circumstances might a person engage in work appropriate to a lower varna? How far may one go in this regard, and what are the consequences? May one legitimately assume the duties of a higher varna? Is inter-marriage among the castes considered acceptable?

2) Each varna and jati has its own dharma. Can you find evidence of a universal dharma, common to all Hindus?

3) How might the caste system make political and social unification difficult?

4) Why are women denied access to ceremonies where the Vedic texts are recited? Notwithstanding this prohibition, do women perform any necessary religious functions? If so, what are they, and what do these functions suggest about the status of women?

5) What constraints are placed on women, and why? What freedoms, if any, does a woman enjoy? How and why, if at all, are women protected and honored? What are the duties of their fathers and husbands?

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