Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

The Dharmasutras : The Law Codes of Ancient India, EPUB eBook

The Dharmasutras : The Law Codes of Ancient India EPUB

Part of the Oxford World's Classics series

EPUB

Please note: eBooks can only be purchased with a UK issued credit card and all our eBooks (ePub and PDF) are DRM protected.

Description

The Dharmasutras are the four surviving works of the ancient Indian expert tradition on the subject of dharma, or the rules of behaviour a community recognizes as binding on its members. Written in a pithy and aphoristic style and representing the culmination of a long tradition of scholarship, the Dharmasutras record intense disputes and divergent views on such subjects as the education of the young and their rites of passage, ritual procedures and religious ceremonies, marriage and marital rights and obligations, dietary restrictions, the right professions for and the proper interaction between different social groups, sins and their expiations, institutions for the pursuitof holiness, king and the administration of justice, crimes and punishments, death and ancestral rites.

In short, these unique documents give us a glimpse of how people, especially Brahmin males, were ideally expected to live their lives within an ordered and hierarchically arranged society. In this first English translation of the Dharmasutras for over a century, Patrick Olivelle uses the same lucid and elegant style as in his award-winning translation of the Upanisads and incorporates the most recent scholarship on ancient Indian law, society, and religion.

Complex material is helpfully organized, making this the ideal edition for the non-specialist as well as for students of Indian society and religion.

Information

Information

Also in the Oxford World's Classics series  |  View all