The Laws of Manu
Translated by Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith
Translation first published 1991
Manu smriti or Manav dharma sastra is a compilation
of laws – personal laws, laws for a criminal justice system, and GSP (or ‘Good
Social Practices’) norms – that were compiled about 2000 years ago. They are
attrbuted to a single author, namely Manu, who, it is also claimed, is the
founder of the human race – a Hindu Adam. The text begins with a group of sages
approachng Manu and asking him to tell them the duties of all the four classes
– and in this introductory verse two
impotant points are made rightaway. The first is about the existence of the
four classes – the chatur varna
– more commonly translated as the four castes. This horizontal quartering of
society is taken for granted, never questioned. The only justification for it
is given in one of the verses in the first section, which paraphrases the Purusha
Sukta of the Rig Veda, and describes the creation of the four
castes of humans from the mouth (brahmin), the arms (kshatriya), the
thighs (vaisya) and the feet (sudra) of the Lord (Brahman,
Narayana, Brahma…). This happened, the vedic sloka states, in order that
the worlds and people would prosper and increase. There is no other attempt at
reasoning why this should be so. The more than 2500 verses that follow, then, comprise
a detailed statement of the duties and the laws of the four castes. And this
brings us to the second point evident in the opening verse. The laws are laid
down by Manu, and brook no questioning or reasoning. There is no attempt at
jurisprudence, nor any argument to justify why the laws should be so, and not
otherwise. No, that is not entirely true – the one constant justification that
underlies all the laws is that action contrary to what is stated in the smriti
would end up producing a ‘confusion of the classes’, which is presented,
without any reasoning, as the supreme evil. (Note that, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna used exactly the same justification when he urged
Arjuna to do his duty as a kshatriya and fight the Kaurava.) Thus, according to
Manu, society can either organize itself on the basis of the four castes, or it
cannot be organized at all – it would continue to exist in savagery. Much the
same sort of justification, or lack of it, underlie many of the other
statements of law that inspire some of the major religions of the world – the
Bible, the Koran, the laws of Moses, and even the ‘secular’ laws of Hammurabi.
One may be tempted to consider The Laws of Manu, therefore, as probably the
closest that Hinduism has to a foundational revealed text, one on which the
entire religion is based. Indian society, however has always been extremely
complex and diverse, and if at all Manu smriti should be considered tantamount
to God’s word, just as the Koran and the Bible are so considered, it is for a
limited form of Hinduism, i.e. Brahminism, and not for all of it.
The first chapter in Manu smriti is the
story of the genesis of the Universe, and of everything in it. Out of nothing,
Brahman mediated and produced light and matter, and ‘Life, the Universe and
Everything’. A lot of different life forms are mentioned, but obviously not
all. The list, of course, includes the creation of the four castes of humans.
The subsequent chapters list, in excruciating detail, all the duties that
devolve upon these four groups of people, duties to each other, as well as to
the state and society. The focus, though, is mainly on the brahmins, which
Doniger coyly translates as ‘the priestly class’. (Kshatriyas are translated as
the ‘rulers’, vaishyas as ‘commoners’ and sudras as ‘servants’.) This class is
given specific, and sometimes contrary, instructions about what to do, and how
to do it, during almost every second of their lives, from birth to death. The
king, too, is prescribed his royal duties, especially how he should behave
towards the brahmins and how he should punish those who transgress against
them. The vaishyas and the sudras are not given any detailed prescriptions.
Sudras, in fact, are only instructed that their karma is simply to serve the
‘twice-born’, without resentment! Many
laws are prescribed generally for the ‘twice-born’. Doniger implies that this
term means all the three ‘upper’ castes, and only excepting the sudras.
However, a ‘twice-born’ is born for the second time when he performs the thread
ceremony. Since this is a particularly brahmin ritual – at least as far as I
know – ‘twice born’ must mean ‘brahmin’. But, contrary to this understanding of
mine, Manu says specifically in Chapter 10, that ‘the brahmin, the kshatriya
and the vaishya are the three twice-born classes’. Of course he also says,
immediately before this verse, that ‘the priest is the lord of the other castes
because he is pre-eminent, because he maintains the restraints, and because of
the pre-eminnece of his transformative rituals’. So I guess, though Manu may
have meant the general prescriptions, except when specifically stated
otherwise, for the three ‘upper’ castes, today the word ‘twice-born’ has come
to mean ‘brahmins’, i.e. the priestly caste.
A large number of situations, mainly domestic,
are envisaged, and rules prescribed for each of them, along with exceptions,
and exceptions to the exceptions, and so on. A kind of criminal justice system
is also prescribed, mainly for the education of the king, for example on what
are the laws of property, and how theft should be punished. In some of the
prescriptions, cows are rated higher than sudras or women. There are several
hundred verses given over to sexual transgressions, and how to prevent or
punish them. The thrust of most of these are “cherchez la femme” – the woman is
always at fault. ‘It is the very nature of women’, says Manu, ‘to corrupt men
here on earth.’ This is simply one example of his rampant misogyny, handed down
over the centuries, apparently to influence and inform attitudes to women in
present-day India.
Elsewhere he says, ‘A girl, a young woman, or even an old woman should not do
anything independently, even in her own house.’ And again, ‘A virtous wife
should constantly serve her husband like a god, even if he behave badly, freely
indulges his lust, and is devoid of any good qualities’. I could quote many
more verses to illustrate this point. But to be fair, there are also a few
verses – very few, though – where Manu urges greater respect for women. ‘The
deities delight’, he says, ‘where women are revered, but where women are not
revered all rites are fruitless’. Also, more obscurely, ‘A woman’s mouth is
always unpolluted, as is a bird that knocks a fruit’. Presumably this means it
is OK to eat the left-over food of a women.
Food – what, how, when and by whom it is to be
eaten – is a major preoccupation of the Manu smriti, and a couple of
chapters are given over to it. Again all prescriptions and prohibitions are
aimed at the ‘twice-born’. Given that ‘brahmin’ and ‘vegetarian’ are almost
synonymous in most of present-day India, and in fact that the latter word is
used as code for the former in housing ads, for example, it is surprising that
there is so much description of what meat can and cannot be eaten and when and
how, by priests (brahmins) as much as by other ‘twice-born’. (Sudras, of course,
according to Manu, eat anything at all – that’s one of things that makes them
sudras.) In one verse, along with mushrooms and onions and garlic, ‘meat that
is not consecrated’ is prohibited – implying that consecrated meat is OK.
Elsewhere, ‘Someone who eats meat, after honouring the gods and ancestors, when
he has bought it, or killed it himself, or has been given it by someone, does
nothing bad’. But though there are no prohibitions on eating meat, there are
some strong exhortations not to do so. ‘A man who does not … eat meat becomes
dear to people …’
There is chapter on the duties of a king –
providing security and meting out justice. There are prescriptions on how to
build forts, how to move the army from one place to another, and on the
architecture of the administrative system. These are impractical from a modern
view-point, but do give a lot of historical data to reconstruct the political and
administrative science of those times. There is also a chapter of prescriptions
for a criminal justice system and a penal code. This is very detailed and
includes descriptions of the nature of acceptable evidence. ‘One single man,
who is not greedy may be a witness, but not several women, even if they are
unpolluted, because a women’s understanding is unreliable.’ The penal system
is, of course, loaded heavily in favour of the brahmins, less so the kshatriya
and the vaishya. It is heavily against the sudra, and women. Interestingly,
there are no specifications on which takes priority – gender or caste. For
example, there is no discussion on whether a brahmin woman is more privileged
than a kshatriya man. I suppose the answer to this question is maybe yes,
because the woman is the property of the man and as such may have the kind of
privileges he himself has.
Most, if not all, of the laws and instructions
are meaningless in today’s world, if not actually retrograde. Many of them find
echoes in other regressive social systems such as that of the Taliban, for
example. Apparently, a great deal of the Hindu Personal Law in India was based
on Manu smriti until large scale reform in the last many decades. (Such
reform, unfortunately, is even slower in visiting Muslim and Christian Personal
laws). However not all of Manu is silly or downright bad. Chapter 6, in
particular, seems to be written by a more philosophical sage – ‘…he should be
controlled, friendly and mentally composed; he should always be a giver and a
non-taker, compassionate to all living beings’. And, ‘If a twice-born man has
not caused even an atom of danger to any living creatures, when he is freed
from his body there will be no danger to him from anything at all’. And here’s
something that resonates well with present-day management-ese, ‘…success is for
the man who is alone, he neither deserts nor is deserted’. There are echoes in
this chapter of Jainism and of Samkhya philosophy. There are also a slender
fore-shadowing of Advaita.
But these are meagre counterweights to the
overall negative thrust of the Manu smirti. I would summarize these as
follows.
·
Men
are born into one of the four varnas. The system is heirarchical, with brahmin
being morally and spiritually superior to the kshatriya, who is likewise
superior to the vaishya, all of these being far above the sudra.
·
Each
varna has its
own set of duties, obligations, practices and professions (karma and dharma)
·
These
are listed out in extensive and absurd detail for brahmin and kshatriya, and
also to some extent for vaishya. Sudra is imperiously ordered to serve the
other three varna.
·
The
brahmin is associated with knowledge (the veda, and other texts, the rituals,
the mantras, everything spiritual, eternal and really ‘important’); the
kshatriya with valour, administration, security and justice; the vashiya with
business, agriculture, manufacture and trade. The sudra are servants, only
slightly more privileged than slaves. Not-mentioned, I think, are people
entirely outside this chatur varna,
outcasts such as tribals – the chandala, perhaps?.
·
It
is better to perform your ‘own’ dharma (i.e. that of the varna into which you are born) badly, than
another’s dharma well.
·
Women
are property and to be treated as such.
Doniger’s translation is easy to read and
comprehensive. Even words like karma and dharma are translated into English, in
many different, context-dependent ways. Of course, not knowing Sanskrit, I have
to depend on her reputation to judge how true to the ‘original’ this version
is. One indication of its integrity and her sincerity is that I do not see any
gratuitous remarks against either the text or its authors, or those who still
find everyday relevance in it. She in fact quotes A.K. Ramanujan negative
statement [‘One has only to read Manu after a bit of Kant to be struck by the
former’s extraordinary lack of universality’] only to try and redeem Manu by
trying to analyse him, and find meaning and profundity in his work, purely in
terms of his own context.
The translation, as I said was easy to read,
probably because I just skimmed over large chunks of it. These were the
mind-numbing lists of things to do and not to do in various situations. About
these lists, Doniger remarks: ‘Beginning in the Veda, persisting through the
technical literature of India
(including Manu’s text), and still characteristic of much of modern Indian
scholarship, is the attempt to reach universality through inclusion, listing,
and ordering of all relevant particulars’. I think of my own attempts (lectures,
articles, books) at explaining, for example, crystallography, and say; ‘Amen to
that!’
