58. Commentaries and Nibandhas (digests) — Volume I: Part I

58. Commentaries and Nibandhas (digests)

The literature on dharmaśāstra falls into three well- marked but somewhat over-lapping periodṣ The first period is that of the ancient dharmasūtras and of the Manusmṛti. It is a period dating from at least the 6th century B. C. to the beginnings of the Christian era Next comes the period when most of the versified smṛtis were composed and it ranges from the first centuries of the Christian era to about 800 A. D. The third period is that of the commentators and the writers of digestṣ This covers over a thousand years from about the 7th century to 1800 A. D. The first part of this last period was the golden era of famous commentatorṣ Commentaries on smṛti works continued to be written almost to the end of this period, e. g. Nandapaṇḍita wrote the commentary called Vaijayanti on the Viṣṇudharmasūtra in the 17th century. But the general tendency from the 12th century onwards was to write works not professing to be commentaries on a parti- cular smṛti, but works that were in the nature of digests containing a synthesis of all the dicta of smṛti writers on topics of dharma. Examples of this class of works are the Kalpataru, the Smṛticandrikā, the Caturvargacintāmaṇi, the Ratnākaras of Cāṇḍeśvara. Even when in the earlier part of this period writers professed to compose only commentaries on particular works, they adopted the style of digests trying to introduce order out of a chaotic mass of Smṛti dicta and explaining away apparent contradictionṣ For example, Viśvarūpa's commentary (in the ācāra and prāyaścitta sec- tions ), the Mitākṣarā and Aparārka's work, though professing to be commentaries on Yājñavalkya, are really in the nature of digestṣ In fact there is no hard and fast line of demarcation between a tikā and a nibandha ( digest ). Vijñāneśvara is described by the Dvaītanirṇaya of Saṅkarabhaṭṭa as the most eminent of all writers of nibandhaṣ Therefore, though it is usual to speak of the third period as one of commenta- tors and nibandhakāras, there is no necessity in this work to observe any sharp line of distinction between the two. In the following pages a few prominent and typical commentators and nibandhakāras who have written on all or most of the branches of dharmaśāstra and whose works have attained classical rank will be dealt with in chronological order as far as that can be done with any accuracy.