[93] There is no fault of inauspiciousness in kings or in people who are engaged in vows or extended sacrifices; for (kings) are seated on the throne of Indra, and (the others) are in the realm of the Veda. [94] Instant purification is ordained for a king on his noble throne, and the reason is that he is seated there in order to protect his subjects. [95] (Instant purification is also ordained) for those who are killed in a riot or a battle or by lightning or by the king, (or who have died) for the sake of a cow or a priest, and those whose (purification) a king desires. [96] A king has a body made of the eight Guardians of the World: Soma (the Moon), Fire, the Sun, Wind, Indra, the Lords of Wealth and Water (Kubera and Varuṇa), and Yama. [97] The king is inhabited by the Guardians of the World, and no pollution is ordained for him; for the pollution and purification of mortals are brought about and removed by the Guardians of the World. [98] When a man is killed by upraised weapons in battle, in fulfilment of the duty of a ruler, instantly he completes both a sacrifice and the period of pollution (caused by his death). This is a fixed rule. [99] A priest who has performed the rites (for the dead) is cleaned by touching water; a ruler (by touching) the animal that he rides and his weapons, a commoner (by touching) his whip or reins, and a servant (by touching) his stick.
[100] The pollution of co-feeding relatives has thus been told to you who are priests; now learn about the purification after the death of anyone who is not a co-feeding relative.
[101] When a priest has carried away, like a relative, a dead twice-born man who is not his co-feeding relative, or relatives of his mother, he becomes clean after three nights. [102] But if he eats their food, he becomes clean after ten days, and after only one day if he does not eat their food or live in their house. [103] When a man has voluntarily followed a corpse, whether of a relative or not, he is cleaned by bathing with all his clothes on, touching fire, and eating clarified butter. [104] A dead priest should not be carried away by a servant when men of his own class are standing by; for a burnt offering defiled by the touch of a servant would not get to heaven.
[105] Knowledge, inner heat, fire, (sacrificial) food, earth, thought, water, plastering (with cowdung), wind, rituals, the sun, and time are the agents of cleansing for embodied creatures. [106] Purification in matters of money is traditionally said to be the ultimate of all purifications; for a man who is unpolluted in money matters is truly unpolluted, but a man who gets his purification from earth and water is not unpolluted. [107] Learned men are cleaned by patience, and those who have done what should not be done (are cleaned) by generosity; people who have secretly done evil (are cleaned) by chanting (the Veda), and those who best know the Veda (are cleaned) by generating inner heat. [108] Whatever has to be cleaned is cleaned by means of earth and water; a river is cleaned by its current, a woman whose mind has been corrupted (is cleaned) by her menstrual blood, and priests (are cleaned) by renunciation. [109] The limbs are cleaned by water, and the mind is cleaned by truth; the soul of a living being is cleaned by learning and inner heat, and the intellect by knowledge.
[110] The settled rule for the purification of the body has thus been explained to you; now learn the rule for the cleansing of various (inanimate) things.
[111] Wise men have said that metal articles, gems, and anything made of stone are to be cleaned with ashes, water, and earth. [112] A golden bowl that has no stains is cleaned just with water, as is whatever is born in water or made of stone, or silver that has not been worked. [113] Gold and silver were born of the union of water and fire, and so both of them are best washed by their own source. [114] Copper, iron, pewter, brass, tin, and lead must be purified as is appropriate (for each), with alkali, acids, and water.
[115] It is traditionally said that all liquids are cleaned by straining, solid things by sprinkling, and wooden things by planing. [116] In a sacrificial ritual, the sacrificial vessels are cleaned by rubbing them with your hand, and the wooden Soma cups and dippers by rinsing them with water. [117] The big pots and the ladles and spoons are cleaned with hot water, and so are the wooden sword, the winnowing-basket, and the cart, and the mortar and pestle. [118] Large quantities of grain and cloth should be purified by sprinkling them with water, and small quantities by rinsing them with water. [119] Leather and wicker are cleaned just like cloth, and vegetables, roots, and fruits just like grain. [120] Silk and wool are cleaned with saline soil, and cashmere blankets with (the puréed fruits of) the soap-berry tree; fine cloth with the fruits of the wood-apple tree, and linen with mustard. [121] A discerning person should clean conch-shell, horn, bone, and ivory just like linen, or with cow’s urine and water.
[122] Grass, wood, and straw are cleaned by sprinkling them with water, a house by sweeping it and by smearing it (with cowdung), and anything made of earth by baking it again. [123] But if something made of earth has been touched by wine, urine, excrement, saliva, pus, or blood, it cannot be cleaned by baking it again. [124] There are five ways to clean land: sweep it, smear it (with cowdung), water it, dig it, and keep cows on it. [125] Food that birds have pecked, cows have sniffed, people have kicked or sneezed on, or hair or bugs have defiled is cleaned if earth is scattered on it. [126] As long as the smell and the stain remain on something that has been smeared with an impure substance, earth and water should be used for all the cleansing of objects.
[127] The gods made three purifiers for priests: what is not seen (to be impure), what is washed with water, or what is approved by the word (of a priest). [128] Water on the ground is clean if there is enough to slake the thirst of a cow, if nothing impure is in it, and if it has (the right) smell, colour, and taste. [129] The hand of an artisan is always clean, as is what is laid out for sale and the food that a chaste student of the Veda obtains by begging; this is a fixed rule. [130] A woman’s mouth is always unpolluted, as is a bird that knocks down a fruit; a calf is unpolluted while the milk is flowing, and a dog is unpolluted when it catches a wild animal. [131] Manu has said that the meat of an animal killed by dogs or killed by carnivores or by aliens such as ‘Fierce’ Untouchables is unpolluted.
[132] The orifices of the body above the navel are all pure, but those below are impure, as are the defilements that slip out of the body. [133] Flies, drops of water, a shadow, a cow, a horse, the rays of the sun, dust, earth, the wind, and fire are pure to touch, it should be noted. [134] Earth and water should be used as necessary to clean (the organs) that emit urine and excrement and also to clean (the following) twelve bodily defilements: [135] oil, semen, blood, bone marrow, urine, excrement, snot, ear-wax, phlegm, tears, the discharge from the eyes, and sweat; these are the twelve human defilements.
[136] A man who wants to become clean should use one piece of earth for his penis, three for his anus, ten for the one (left) hand, and seven for both hands. [137] This is how householders purify themselves; it should be doubled for chaste students of the Veda, tripled for forest-dwellers, and quadrupled for ascetics. [138] When someone has urinated or defecated, he should rinse his mouth and wash the orifices of his body; and he should also do this when he is about to recite the Veda and always when he is going to eat food. [139] A man who wants to purify his body should first rinse his mouth with water three times and then wipe his mouth twice; but a woman or a servant should just do each act once. [140] Servants who live properly should shave (their heads) once a month; they should purify themselves like commoners and eat the leftovers of the twice-born.
[141] Drops of water that fall from a man’s mouth on to a part of his body do not make him a man defiled with food still on his mouth and hands, nor do hairs of his beard that get into his mouth or what gets stuck between his teeth. [142] If drops of water touch the feet of a person who is giving other people water to rinse their mouths, they should be regarded as the same as water on the ground and they do not make him unpurified. [143] If someone who has something in his hands is touched in any way by someone with food still on his mouth and hands, he becomes unpolluted if he rinses his mouth without putting that thing
down. [144] Someone who has vomited or violently evacuated his bowels should bathe and then eat clarified butter; (if this happens) after he has eaten rice, he should just rinse his mouth, but a bath is traditionally prescribed for a man (who is thus afflicted) after sexual union. [145] Even if a man is purified, he should rinse his mouth after he has slept and sneezed, eaten and spat, told lies, drunk water, or prepared to recite (the Veda).
[146] The entire set of rules for purification and the cleansing of objects for all classes has thus been described; now learn the duties of women.
[147] A girl, a young woman, or even an old woman should not do anything independently, even in (her own) house. [148] In childhood a woman should be under her father’s control, in youth under her husband’s, and when her husband is dead, under her sons’. She should not have independence. [149] A woman should not try to separate herself from her father, her husband, or her sons, for her separation from them would make both (her own and her husband’s) families contemptible. [150] She should always be cheerful, and clever at household affairs; she should keep her utensils well polished and not have too free a hand in spending. [151] When her father, or her brother with her father’s permission, gives her to someone, she should obey that man while he is alive and not violate her vow to him when he is dead.
[152] Benedictory verses are recited and a sacrifice to the Lord of Creatures is performed at weddings to make them auspicious, but it is the act of giving away (the bride) that makes (the groom) her master. [153] A husband who performs the transformative ritual (of marriage) with Vedic verses always makes his woman happy, both when she is in her fertile season and when she is not, both here on earth and in the world beyond. [154] A virtuous wife should constantly serve her husband like a god, even if he behaves badly, freely indulges his lust, and is devoid of any good qualities. [155] Apart (from their husbands), women cannot sacrifice or undertake a vow or fast; it is because a wife obeys her husband that she is exalted in heaven.
[156] A virtuous wife should never do anything displeasing to the husband who took her hand in marriage, when he is alive or dead, if she longs for her husband’s world (after death). [157] When her husband is dead she may fast as much as she likes, (living) on auspicious flowers, roots, and fruits, but she should not even mention the name of another man. [158] She should be long-suffering until death, self-restrained, and chaste, striving (to fulfil) the unsurpassed duty of women who have one husband. [159] Many thousands of priests who were chaste from their youth have gone to heaven without begetting offspring to continue the family. [160] A virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven just like those chaste men, even if she has no sons.
[161] But a woman who violates her (vow to her dead) husband because she is greedy for progeny is the object of reproach here on earth and loses the world beyond. [162] No (legal) progeny are begotten here by another man or in another man’s wife; nor is a second husband ever prescribed for virtuous women. [163] A woman who abandons her own inferior husband and lives with a superior man becomes an object of reproach in this world; she is said to be ‘previously had by another man’. [164] A woman who is unfaithful to her husband is an object of reproach in this world; (then) she is reborn in the womb of a jackal and is tormented by the diseases born of her evil.
[165] The woman who is not unfaithful to her husband and who restrains her mind, speech, and body reaches her husband’s worlds (after death), and good people call her a virtuous woman. [166] The woman who restrains her mind-and-heart, speech, and body through this behaviour wins the foremost renown here on earth and her husband’s world in the hereafter. [167] A twice-born man who knows the law should burn a wife of the same class who behaves in this way and dies before him, using the (fire of the) daily fire sacrifice and the sacrificial vessels. [168] When he has given the (sacrificial) fires in the final ritual to the wife who has died before him, he may marry again and kindle the fires again. [169] He must never neglect the five (great) sacrifices, but should take a wife and live in his house, in accordance with this rule, for the second part of his life.
End of Chapter 5
[6] The ‘phlegmatic’ fruit is the śelu or Cordia Myxa, a plant that is regarded as being full of phlegm or mucus. The first milk of the cow is thick and full of colostrum.
[7] Meat is consecrated by sprinkling water on it and saying Vedic verses over it at the public (śrauta) sacrifices. The sacrificial foods should be offered first to the gods (and the priests), and only then may the remnants be eaten by other people.
[8] Animals with a whole, solid hoof (ekaśapha) are the class of equines.
[9] Buffalo were evidently still found in the wild at this period in India, though they were also already widely domesticated.
[11] The general prohibition against eating whole-hooved animals, which has already been stated in 5.8, admits at least one important exception: the horse that is slaughtered and eaten in the horse-sacrifice. The little finch is the ṭiṭṭibha (Parra Jancana).
[12] The sparrow is the kalavinka, the aquatic bird is the plava, the goose is the haṃsa, the waterbird is the cakravaka, the crane is the sārasa, the wildfowl the rajjuvāla, the moorhen the dātyūha, and the starling the sārika.
[14] The heron is the baka, the crane the balākā, the raven the kākola, and the wagtail the khañjarīṭaka.
[15] The fish, being both a scavenger and a cannibal (an animal that eats others of its own species), contains within it all kinds of meat.
[16] These fish are called pāṭhīna (Silurus Pelorius or Boalis), rohita (Cyprinus Rohitaka), rājīva (‘striped’), siṃhatuṇḍa (‘lion-faced’), and saśalka (‘scaly’) in Sanskrit. It is hard, if not impossible, to identify some of the precise species.
[18] It is hard to distinguish the hedgehog and porcupine precisely (though it is evident that they are not exactly the same as the European species), but their names are evocative of prickles: the first is literally a ‘dog-piercer’ (śvāvidha), and the second ‘arrowish’ (śālyaka). The animals with one row of teeth are equines.
[19] Here, as elsewhere, the ‘fall’ might be from caste, in this world, or into hell, in the next.
[20] The ‘Heating’ vow (sāntapana), the ‘Ascetic’s Moon-course’ vow (yaticāndrāyaṇa), and various forms of the ‘Painful’ vow are described in detail at 11.213, 11.219, 11.212.
[22] One commentator on this verse says Agastya did this to feed his children. Agastya is also said to have easily digested several demons and the entire ocean in order to help the gods, who were in a sense his dependants at that time (Mahābhārata 3.97, 100–103).
[54] The commentators explain that a person should merely refrain from eating the meat specifically prohibited by the teachings. The verse implies that it is better to eat all sorts of foods except meat (or except certain meats) than to subsist on hermit-food alone.
[55] This translation of this much-quoted verse is based on that of Charles Lanman, who attempted to capture the Sanskrit pun: meat is called māṃsa because he (sa) eats me (mām) in the other world if I eat him now. A similar pun is made in Vedantic texts on the metaphor for the soul, the swan (haḥsa), said to express the identity of the individual soul (ātman) and the world-soul (brahman): ‘I am he’ (ahaṃ sa).
[56] The implication is that these activities are permitted under the specified circumstances, but that, even then, it is better to refrain from them and, perhaps, to refrain from engagement in life in general (pravṛtti), which is here, as often, explicitly contrasted with a word that means disengagement (nivṛtti) from life in general.
[59] ‘Co-feeding’ relatives are sapiṇḍas. The ancestors are calculated for seven generations into the past and the future. The term thus includes a man’s father, father’s father, father’s grandfather; mother, mother’s father, mother’s grandfather; son, son’s son, son’s grandson; daughter, daughter’s son, daughter’s grandson. It also includes the same group starting from the brothers and sisters of both par
ents, and several others. The four rules for the duration of pollution may apply to four different sorts of mourners, or they may depend upon the status or age of the dead person, or even upon the four specific ages of the dead child designated in the previous verse.
[60] The ‘co-watering’ relatives are the samānodakas, literally ‘people who offer the same libations of water’, generally said to include people of six or seven generations beyond the point where the relationship of co-feeding relatives (sapiṇḍas) ceases.
[62] This verse seems to contradict the previous verse. Several commentators attempt to resolve the dilemma by condensing the two verses into one. Others suggest that 5.62 offers alternative views, which seems more likely.
[63] The commentators suggest various ways of resolving the apparent contradiction in these two lines, such as specifying different women for the two different instances. One might also suggest (though in flagrant contradiction of the commentators, who gloss the first line as indicating that the man is begetting a child) that the first line does not specify the presence of any woman at all, for Manu disapproves of men who shed their semen all by themselves (as in the rules for the man who breaks his vow by shedding his semen, 11.119–24).
[64] Some commentators suggest that the first half of this rule applies to priests who carry dead bodies to the cremation grounds for money; others that it applies to anyone who touches or carries a corpse, ‘for love or for money’, as Bühler puts it.
The Laws of Manu Page 20