The Laws of Manu

by The Laws of Manu (retail) (epub)

  [65] The corpse is carried out of the village and into the cremation grounds.

  [68] The unpolluted ground is probably a place where there are no other corpses.

  [72] ‘Umbilical’ relatives are literally those ‘(born) of the same navel’ (sanābhi).

  [74] Here the contrasting terms are relatives (bāndhavas, more particularly, maternal relatives) and in-laws (sambandhins, affinal relatives, relatives by marriage).

  [78] The commentaries suggest that the relative who is not a co-feeder (pṛthakpiṇḍa) may be a co-waterer (samānodaka).

  [82] To make better sense of this verse, some commentators suggest that the last man mentioned does not know the Vedas and supplements to the Vedas, or that he is not one’s guru, both of which are possible but rather awkward readings.

  [84] The rites performed in fires are the daily fire sacrifices (agnihotras).

  [85] The Untouchable in this verse is a divākīrti (‘notorious by day’), a term for a barber or for a particular group of Untouchable leatherworkers also called ‘Fierce’ Untouchables (caṇḍālas).

  [86] The Vedic verses to the sun (Sūrya) are ṛg Veda 1.50.1ff; the purifying Vedic verses are the verses to Soma in the ninth book of the ṛg Veda. See 11.250–58.

  [88] The vow may be the vow of chastity of a student, or some other vow. In the former case, some commentators make an exception and allow him to pour the libation for one or both parents.

  [89] ‘Born in vain’ probably means that they have never become real people through the transformative rituals or that they have violated the law that is their raison d’être.

  [90] The women who live on lust may be prostitutes or merely promiscuous women.

  [92] That is, a commoner through the western gate, a ruler through the northern, and a priest through the eastern, according to the commentators.

  [93] ‘Are in the realm of the Veda’ (brahmabhūta) might also be translated ‘have merged with ultimate reality’ or ‘have become priests’ or ‘have become as pure as priests’, as some commentaries suggest.

  [95] The people whom the king needs to keep purified would include servants or ministers whom he depends upon to act for him.

  [98] A man’s death in battle (or, according to some, his subsequent death from wounds received in battle) is regarded as a sacrifice in which he is the victim, and gives him the same religious merit that he would have acquired from performing an actual sacrifice. As a result, his death does not make any of his relatives impure.

  [102] The rule applies to someone who eats the food of those relatives who have been polluted by death.

  [104] The ‘burnt-offering’ may refer, in a real instance or in a simile, to an actual oblation offered in the funeral sacrifice, or, in a euphemism, to the corpse of the dead man regarded as such an offering.

  [112] Things born in water are shells and so forth.

  [113] The commentaries cite Vedic verses describing the birth of gold from the sexual union of the god of fire (Agni) and the goddess of water (Varuṇāṇī). Fire and water are therefore the source (literally, the womb) of gold and silver.

  [115] Straining is best done with two blades of sacrificial grass (kuśa).

  [116] The wooden cups are the cāmasa cups.

  [117] The big pots are the cāru pots used for the cāru oblations of rice, butter, and milk.

  [120] ‘Cashmere blankets’ are kutapas, special blankets from Nepal made of goat’s hair. The soap-berry is the ariṣṭaka tree (Sapindus Detergens Roxb.). The wood-apple tree is the bilva or Bel (Aegle Marmelos).

  [124] Some commentaries say that the cows need remain only for a day and a night.

  [125] Avadhūta (‘kicked or sneezed on’) may mean kicked or blown upon or defiled by something shaken on to it or touched by a broom or some other object. ‘Hair or bugs’ may also mean ‘hair-bugs’, i.e. lice.

  [131] The word here translated as ‘alien’ is dasyu, a generic term for a group of low castes defined at 10.45. The dasyu was in Vedic times a non-Aryan or a barbarian, often a demon; later the dasyu was a slave, and still later a robber or man fallen from caste. The word came to be used as a general term of opprobrium, denoting (according to the commentators on 8.66) a murderer, a bad-tempered man, or a low-caste man. In Manu, it usually designates a person of no caste at all, somehow outside of the entire caste system. The rationale for the purity of meat procured from such paradigmatically impure sources is too complex to contemplate here.

  [135] Several commentaries gloss ‘marrow’ as the fatty substance in the middle of the brain, but this does not seem to be something that one would encounter with any significant frequency.

  [161] This verse and the next argue against the custom of appointing a woman to bear a son to another man after her husband’s death, a custom which Manu discusses with considerable ambivalence in 9.56–70.

  [163] The words for inferior and superior (apakṛṣṭa and utkṛṣṭa) probably refer to caste birth but may refer more generally to the qualities of the man himself.

  CHAPTER 6

  [1] After he has lived in the householder’s stage of life in accordance with the rules in this way, a twice-born Vedic graduate should live in the forest, properly restrained and with his sensory powers conquered. [2] But when a householder sees that he is wrinkled and grey, and (when he sees) the children of his children, then he should take himself to the wilderness. [3] Renouncing all food cultivated in the village and all possessions, he should hand his wife over to his sons and go to the forest – or take her along. [4] Taking with him his sacrificial fire and the fire-implements for the domestic (sacrifice), he should go out from the village to the wilderness and live (there) with his sensory powers restrained.

  [5] He should offer the (five) great sacrifices with various sorts of the pure food of hermits, or with vegetables, roots, and fruit, ritually prepared. [6] He should wear an animal skin or bark or rags; he should bathe in the evening and in the morning; he should always keep his hair matted and his beard, body hair, and nails (uncut). [7] He should give as a propitiatory offering and as alms some of whatever he has to eat, to the best of his ability; with alms consisting of water, roots, and fruits he should honour the people who come to his hermitage. [8] Constantly devoting himself to the private recitation of the Veda, he should be controlled, friendly, and mentally composed; he should always be a giver and a non-taker, compassionate to all living beings.

  [9] He should make the oblation of the daily fire sacrifice in the three sacrificial fires, carefully and according to the rules, not neglecting the junctures of the new moon and the full moon. [10] He should perform the sacrifice to the lunar constellations, the sacrifice of the first-fruits, the four-monthly sacrifices, and the sacrifices of the winter and summer solstices, in the proper order. [11] With the pure food of hermits, harvested in spring or autumn, that he himself has collected, he should make an offering of sacrificial cakes and consecrated pots of porridge, separately and according to the rules.

  [12] And when he has made an oblation to the deities consisting of an offering of the purest things of the forest, he should make use of the remainder for himself, together with salt that he himself has made. [13] He should eat vegetables that grow on land or in water, flowers, roots, and fruits, the products of pure trees, and oils from fruits. [14] He should not eat honey, meat, mushrooms, or vegetables that grow in the ground; nor the plants known as ‘Grass-of-the-Earth’, horseradish, or the ‘phlegmatic’ fruit. [15] In September or October he should throw away the hermits’ food that he has previously collected, together with his worn-out clothing and his vegetables, roots, and fruits. [16] He should not eat anything grown from land tilled with a plough, even if someone has thrown it out, nor roots and fruits grown in a village, even if he is in distress (from hunger). [17] He should eat food cooked by fire or ripened by time, and he may grind it with a stone or use his teeth for a mortar.

  [18] He may wash out (his food dish) immediately (after his daily meal) or colle
ct enough food for a month, or for six months, or for a year. [19] When he has gathered as much food as he can, he may eat it at night or in the daytime, at every fourth mealtime or even at every eighth mealtime. [20] Or he may live by the ‘Moon-course’ vow, (diminishing his food intake every day) in the bright (half of the month) and (increasing it) in the dark (half); or he may eat thin boiled barley-gruel once on each of the two days at the end of each lunar fortnight. [21] Or he may follow the doctrine of the ‘Diggers’ and subsist constantly on nothing but flowers, roots, and fruits that have been ripened by time and have fallen by themselves.

  [22] He may roll about on the ground all day or stand on tiptoe, and he may relax by standing and sitting, and go to the water (to wash) at the time of the three Soma pressings. [23] He should heat himself with the five fires in summer, live under the open sky in the monsoon, and wear wet clothes in winter, gradually increasing his inner heat. [24] When he washes at the time of the three Soma pressings he should offer libations of water to the ancestors and to the gods, and he should dry up his own body by generating more and more intense inner heat. [25] When he has transferred his three sacrificial fires within himself in accordance with the rules, he should become a hermit with no fire and no home, eating only roots and fruits, [26] making no effort to get the things that give happiness, chaste, sleeping on the bare ground, owning no shelter, taking the roots of trees for his home.

  [27] He should get food for bare subsistence by begging from priests who are ascetics themselves, from householders, and from other twice-born forest-dwellers. [28] Or a man who lives in the forest may get (food) from a village, receiving it in the hollow of a leaf or in his hand or in a broken clay dish, and eat eight mouthfuls of it. [29] To perfect himself, a priest who lives in the forest must follow these and other preparations for consecration, as well as the various revealed canonical texts of the Upaniṣads, [30] and those that sages and priestly householders have followed, to increase learning and inner heat and to clean the body.

  [31] Or he should set out in a north-easterly direction and walk straight forward, diligently engaged in eating nothing but water and air, until his body collapses. [32] A priest who has abandoned his body by any one of those practices of the great sages, without sorrow or fear, is exalted in the world of ultimate reality.

  [33] And when he has spent the third part of his lifespan in the forests in this way, he may abandon all attachments and wander as an ascetic for the fourth part of his lifespan. [34] A man who has gone from one stage of life to another, made the offerings into the fire, conquered his sensory powers, exhausted himself by giving alms and propitiatory offerings, and then lived as a wandering ascetic – when he has died, he thrives. [35] When a man has paid his three debts, he may set his mind-and-heart on Freedom; but if he seeks Freedom when he has not paid the debts, he sinks down. [36] When a man has studied the Veda in accordance with the rules, and begotten sons in accordance with his duty, and sacrificed with sacrifices according to his ability, he may set his mind-and-heart on Freedom. [37] But if a twice-born man seeks Freedom when he has not studied the Vedas, and has not begotten progeny, and has not sacrificed with sacrifices, he sinks down. [38] When he has performed the sacrifice to the Lord of Creatures, in which he gives away all his possessions as the sacrificial gift, and he has transferred his (three sacrificial) fires within himself, a priest may leave his house to wander as an ascetic. [39] When a man who expounds the Veda promises safety to all living beings and leaves his house to wander as an ascetic, he wins worlds made of brilliant energy. [40] If a twice-born man has not caused even an atom of danger to any living creatures, when he has been freed from his body there will be no danger to him from anything at all. [41] When he has departed from his house, taking with him the instruments of purification, he should wander as an ascetic hermit, indifferent to the desirable pleasures that may come his way.

  [42] He should always go all alone, with no companion, to achieve success; realizing that success is for the man who is alone, he neither deserts nor is deserted. [43] The hermit should have no fire and no home, but should go to a village to get food, silent, indifferent, unwavering and deep in concentration. [44] A skull-bowl, the roots of trees, poor clothing, no companionship, and equanimity to everything – this is the distinguishing mark of one who is Freed. [45] He should not welcome dying, nor should he welcome living, but wait for the right time as a servant waits for orders. [46] He should set down his foot on a place purified by his gaze, drink water purified by a straining cloth, speak words purified by truth, and act in ways purified by mind-and-heart. [47] He should endure hard words and never despise anyone, nor become anyone’s enemy for the sake of this body. [48] He should not respond with anger against someone who is angry, but speak a blessing when he is threatened; nor should he speak untruthful words shed at the seven gates. [49] He should live here on earth seated in ecstatic contemplation of the soul, indifferent, without any carnal desires, with the soul as his only companion and happiness as his goal.

  [50] He should never try to obtain alms by (interpreting) portents and omens, nor by skill in astrology or palmistry, nor by counselling or disputation. [51] He should not go near a house swarming with ascetics, priests, birds, dogs, or other beggars. [52] With his hair, nails, and beard trimmed, carrying a bowl, a staff, and a water pot, he should wander constantly, self-controlled and without oppressing any living being. [53] His bowls should not be cracked or made of metal, and they should be purified with water in the traditional way, just like the wooden Soma cups at the sacrifice. [54] Manu the son of the Self-existent has said that a gourd or bowl made of wood, clay, or cane is the bowl for an ascetic.

  [55] He should go begging once a day and not be eager to get a great quantity, for an ascetic who is addicted to food becomes attached to sensory objects, too. [56] When there is no more smoke, when the pestle is at rest, when the embers have gone out, when the people have eaten, when the dishes have been removed, then the ascetic should always go to beg. [57] He should not be sad when he does not get anything nor delighted when he gets something, but take only what will daily sustain his vital breath, transcending any attachment to material things. [58] He should always have disgust for things got by grovelling, for even a Freed ascetic is bound by things got by grovelling. [59] If his sensory powers are being seduced by sensory objects he should turn them back by eating little food and by standing and sitting in solitude. [60] By obstructing his sensory powers, destroying passion and hatred, and doing no violence to living beings he becomes fit for immortality.

  [61] He should think about where men go as a result of the faults of the effects of their past actions and about how they fall into hell and are tortured in the house of Yama; [62] and about how they are separated from the people they like and united with the people they dislike, and are overcome by old age and tormented by diseases; [63] and about how the individual soul goes out of this body and is born again as an embryo, meandering through thousands of millions of wombs: [64] and about the unhappiness that embodied creatures experience as a result of irreligion and the incorruptible happiness that results from achieving the goal of religion. [65] Through yoga he should meditate on the subtleness of the supreme Soul and its presence in the highest and lowest bodies.

  [66] He should fulfil his own duty, with equanimity to all living beings, in whatever stage of life he may choose, even if he is flawed (in that duty); the (mere outward) sign is not (sufficient) fulfilment of one’s duty. [67] Even though the fruit of the clearing-nut tree makes water clear, the water does not become clear by merely mentioning the (fruit’s) name. [68] To protect living creatures, he should inspect the ground constantly as he walks, by night or day, because of the risk of grievous bodily harm. [69] And to cleanse himself of (the deaths of) whatever living creature he unknowingly injures, by day or night, the ascetic should bathe and suppress his breath six times. [70] Suppressing the breath three times, in accordance with the rules and supplemented by the recitation of the syllable
‘Om’ and the three Vedic exclamations, should be regarded as a priest’s supreme generation of inner heat. [71] For just as the defiling dirt of metal ores is burnt away in the blast of a furnace, so the faults of the sensory powers are burnt away by suppressing the breath. [72] Faults should be burnt away by suppressing the breath, guilt by concentrated attention, addictions by resistance, and unmastered qualities by meditation.

  [73] Through the practice of meditation he should realize the destination of the individual soul through higher and lower living beings, which is hard for people with imperfect souls to understand. [74] The man who has the ability to see correctly is not bound by the effects of his past actions, but the man who lacks this vision is caught up in the cycle of transmigration. [75] Through non-violence, lack of attachment of the sensory powers, Vedic rituals, and intense inner heat people achieve that place here on earth.

  [76–7] He should abandon this foul-smelling, tormented, impermanent dwelling-place of living beings, filled with urine and excrement, pervaded by old age and sorrow, infested by illness, and polluted by passion, with bones for beams, sinews for cords, flesh and blood for plaster, and skin for the roof. [78] When he abandons this body, as a tree abandons the bank of a river or a bird abandons a tree, he is freed from a painful shark. [79] Casting the credit for his good deeds on to the people he likes and the discredit for his bad deeds on to those he dislikes, he reaches the eternal ultimate reality through the practice of meditation. [80] When through his natural emotion he becomes impervious to all natural emotions, then he wins lasting happiness here on earth and after death. [81] When he has gradually abandoned all attachments in this way and is freed from all the pairs, he is absorbed right into the ultimate reality.