Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/237

Rh of concise manuals of the details of Vedic sacrifices. Two collections of these Srauta Sutras belonging to the Rig-Veda, called Asvalayana and Sankhayana; three belonging to the Sama-Veda, and called Masaka, Latyayana, and Drahyayana; four belonging to the Black Yajur-Veda, and called Baudhayana, Bharadvaja, Apastamba, and Hiranyakesin; and one belonging to the White Yajur-Veda, and called Katyayana, have been left entire. To the general reader the Srauta Sutras are but dreary and tedious reading, and we therefore turn with pleasure to the Dharma Sutras, which present to us the customs and manners and laws of the times, and are far more valuable for our historical purpose. In the Srauta Sutras we see the Hindus as sacrificers; in the Dharma Sutras we see them as citizens. But the Dharma Sutras of this ancient period have a deeper claim to our attention, because they were modified and put into verse at a later age, and transformed into those law-books with which modern Hindus are familiar, such as Manu and Yajnavalkya. In their original Sutra form (often in prose, sometimes in prose and verse, but never in continuous verse like the later codes), they were composed, just as the Srauta Sutras, by the founders of the Sutra-charanas, and were learned by rote by young Hindus, so that they might, in later life, never forget their duties as citizens and as members of society.

Among the Dharma Sutras which are lost and have not yet been recovered, was the Manava Sutra, or Sutra