Telugu Pdf Manu Smriti
Garcia Miller
Subject: Stop the inauguration of Manusmriti on 11/02/2023 at Telugu University in Hyderabad at 2 PM; instruct the organisers to Stop calling Manu smriti an ancient constitution of India which is anti-constitutional and reinforces every form of inequality.
The Veda Dharma Prachara Trust translated and published Manusmriti from Hindi to Telugu. It will be inaugurated on 11/02/2023 at Telugu University in Hyderabad at 2 PM and calling Manu Smriti the ancient Constitution of India.
It is pertinent to mention that the father of the Indian Constitution, Dr B R Ambedkar, burnt the Manusmriti on December 25, 1927, in the Mahad satyagraha, which was organised for the right to dring water for the ex-untouchables (present Scheduled Castes) from the Mahad (Chavadar) water tank.
Calling Manusmriti the ancient Constitution of India is baseless and laughable because 1) the Nationhood concept was relatively modern; therefore, there was no Nation, and none commissioned none to draft a constitution. 2) At best, it's a religious scripture whose foundation was laid on oppression and social regression. 3) It contradicts the spirit of the Constitution. 4) State university permitting such an event is Objectionable.
It is illegal and a violation of the constitutional spirit to allow the propagation and call Manusmriti the ancient Constitution of India. Therefore it is a request to the authorities to stop the inauguration of Manu Smriti on 11/02/2023 at Telugu Univesity in Hyderabad at 2 PM. Further, instruct the organisers not to call the Manusmriti as ancient Constitution of India as India has only one Constitution, Which the people of India adopted.
The Manusmṛiti (Sanskrit: मनुस्मृत), also known as the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra or Laws of Manu, is one of the many legal texts and constitutions among the many Dharmaśāstras of Hinduism.[1][2] In ancient India, the sages often wrote their ideas on how society should run in the manuscripts. It is believed that the original form of Manusmriti was changed and interpolated with commentaries and opinions of the writers rather than the original content, as many things written in the manuscript contradict each other.[3]
Over fifty manuscripts of the Manusmriti are now known, but the earliest discovered, most translated and presumed authentic version since the 18th century has been the "Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) manuscript with Kulluka Bhatta commentary".[4] Modern scholarship states this presumed authenticity is false, and the various manuscripts of Manusmriti discovered in India are inconsistent with each other, and within themselves, raising concerns of its authenticity, insertions and interpolations made into the text in later times.[4][5]
The title Manusmriti is a relatively modern term and a late innovation, probably coined because the text is in a verse form.[2] The over-fifty manuscripts discovered of the text never use this title, but state the title as Manava Dharmasastra (Sanskrit: मनवधर्मशस्त्र) in their colophons at the end of each chapter. In modern scholarship, these two titles refer to the same text.[2]
Eighteenth-century philologists Sir William Jones and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel assigned Manusmriti to the period of around 1250 BCE and 1000 BCE respectively, which, from later linguistic developments, is untenable due to the language of the text which must be dated later than the late Vedic texts such as the Upanishads which are themselves dated a few centuries later, around 500 BCE.[12] Later scholars shifted the chronology of the text to between the first or second century CE.[13] Olivelle adds that numismatic evidence and the mention of gold coins as a fine suggest the text may date to the 2nd or 3rd century CE.[14]
Manusmriti, Olivelle states, was not a new document - it drew on other texts, and reflects "a crystallization of an accumulated knowledge" in ancient India.[16] The root of theoretical models within Manusmriti rely on at least two shastras that pre-date it: artha (statecraft and legal process) and dharma (an ancient Indian concept that includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and others discussed in various Dharmasutras, older than Manusmriti).[16] Its contents can be traced to Kalpasutras of the Vedic era, which led to the development of Smartasutras consisting of Grihyasutras and Dharmasutras.[17] The foundational texts of Manusmriti include many of these sutras, all from an era preceding the common era. Most of these ancient texts are now lost, and only four have survived: the law codes of Apastamba, Gautama, Baudhayana and Vasishtha.[18]
This section of Manusmriti, like other Hindu law texts, includes fourfold sources of Dharma, states Levinson, which include Atmana santushti (satisfaction of one's conscience), Sadachara (local norms of virtuous individuals), Smriti and Sruti.[24][25][26]
The structure and contents of the Manusmriti suggest it to be a document predominantly targeted at the Brahmins (priestly class) and the Kshatriyas (king, administration and warrior class).[33] The text dedicates 1,034 verses, the largest portion, on laws for and expected virtues of Brahmins, and 971 verses for Kshatriyas.[34] The statement of rules for the Vaishyas (merchant class) and the Shudras (artisans and working class) in the text is extraordinarily brief. Olivelle suggests that this may be because the text was composed to address the balance "between the political power and the priestly interests", and because of the rise in foreign invasions of India in the period it was composed.[33]
Manusmriti lists and recommends virtues in many verses. For example, verse 6.75 recommends non-violence towards everyone and temperance as key virtues,[22][35] while verse 10.63 preaches that all four varnas must abstain from injuring any creature, abstain from falsehood and abstain from appropriating the property of others.[22][36]
Similarly, in verse 4.204, states Olivelle, some manuscripts of Manusmriti list the recommended virtues to be, "compassion, forbearance, truthfulness, non-injury, self-control, not desiring, meditation, serenity, sweetness and honesty" as primary, and "purification, sacrifices, ascetic toil, gift giving, Vedic recitation, restraining the sexual organs, observances, fasts, silence and bathing" as secondary.[37] A few manuscripts of the text contain a different verse 4.204, according to Olivelle, and list the recommended virtues to be, "not injuring anyone, speaking the truth, chastity, honesty and not stealing" as central and primary, while "not being angry, obedience to the teacher, purification, eating moderately and vigilance" to desirable and secondary.[37]
In other discovered manuscripts of Manusmriti, including the most translated Calcutta manuscript, the text declares in verse 4.204 that the ethical precepts under Yamas such as Ahimsa (non-violence) are paramount while Niyamas such as Ishvarapranidhana (contemplation of personal god) are minor, and those who do not practice the Yamas but obey the Niyamas alone become outcasts.[22][38]
Manusmriti has various verses on duties a person has towards himself and to others, thus including moral codes as well as legal codes.[39] Olivelle states that this is similar to the modern contrast between informal moral concerns to birth out of wedlock in the developed nations, along with simultaneous legal protection for children who are born out of wedlock.[39]
Flavia Agnes states that Manusmriti is a complex commentary from women's rights perspective, and the British colonial era codification of women's rights based on it for Hindus, and from Islamic texts for Muslims, picked and emphasised certain aspects while it ignored other sections.[43] This construction of personal law during the colonial era created a legal fiction around Manusmriti's historic role as a scripture in matters relating to women in South Asia.[43][54]
Patrick Olivelle, credited with a 2005 translation of Manusmriti published by the Oxford University Press, states the concerns in postmodern scholarship about the presumed authenticity and reliability of Manusmriti manuscripts.[4] He writes (abridged),
The MDh [Manusmriti] was the first Indian legal text introduced to the western world through the translation of Sir William Jones in 1794. ... All the editions of the MDh, except for Jolly's, reproduce the text as found in the [Calcutta] manuscript containing the commentary of Kulluka. I have called this as the "vulgate version". It was Kulluka's version that has been translated repeatedly: Jones (1794), Burnell (1884), Buhler (1886) and Doniger (1991). ...
The belief in the authenticity of Kulluka's text was openly articulated by Burnell (1884, xxix): "There is then no doubt that the textus receptus, viz., that of Kulluka Bhatta, as adopted in India and by European scholars, is very near on the whole to the original text." This is far from the truth. Indeed, one of the great surprises of my editorial work has been to discover how few of the over fifty manuscripts that I collated actually follow the vulgate in key readings.
Nelson in 1887, in a legal brief before the Madras High Court of British India, had stated, "there are various contradictions and inconsistencies in the Manu Smriti itself, and that these contradictions would lead one to conclude that such a commentary did not lay down legal principles to be followed but were merely recommendatory in nature."[5] Mahatma Gandhi remarked on the observed inconsistencies within Manusmriti as follows:
I hold Manusmriti as part of Shastras. But that does not mean that I swear by every verse that is printed in the book described as Manusmriti. There are so many contradictions in the printed volume that, if you accept one part, you are bound to reject those parts that are wholly inconsistent with it. ... Nobody is in possession of the original text.
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