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Page18
According to Baudhayana daughters could inherit only
the ornaments of their mother, presented according to tile custom or
anything else.69
In Baudhayana’s law no severe punishment is ordained for a woman;
for, as he deprives them of independence and ordains them always to be
under the close watch of their natural guardians, men are, held
responsible for any Sin committed by them. So lie says, wives of men
of all castes must be guarded more carefully than Wealth.70
Whereas, of the other hand, any wrong done to women is severely
punishable.71
Next in importance and antiquity to Baudhayana in the
Black Vajur Vedic school is Apastamba, whose centre has been
determined by scholars to be in Southern India, His Dharma-Sutra,
forms a part of his more comprehensive work the Kalpa-Sutra. The book,
as it has been traditionally handed down to us, comes next to the
Grhya-Sutra and is followed by the Sulva-Sutra. This position of the
book makes it clear that it originally formed an integral part of the
Kalpa-Sutra and that it is not a later addition.
The internal evidence of the Sutra, too, shows that it
is not only the composition of one writer, but, is written on a
comprehensive plan, so as to supplement the rituals of the
Grhya-Sutras; for we find him referring to his previous injunction in
his Dharma Sutra. The commentator Haradatta has been able to point out
two such references,
72 as clearly referring to his Grhya Sutra . Apastamba claims to
belong to a Sutra Karana School, a school whose founder did not
pretend to have received a revelation of Vedic Mantras, but merely
gave a new systematic arrangement to the precepts regarding sacrifices
and the sacred law.
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