JOURNAL 



or THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY, 



Part I.— HISTORY, LITERATURE, &c. 

 No. III.— 1866. 



A notice of the Cjaunaka Smriti. By Professor George Buiiler, 



Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies, Punah College. 



[Received 26th Sept., 1865.] 



There is a passage in the introduction to Shadgurucishya's com- 

 mentary on the Sarvanukramani,* which professes to give an account 

 of the life and works of the ancient sage and writer on the Rig Veda, 

 Qaunaka. It is stated there that Katyayana, who compiled the Sar- 

 vanukramani, or " general index to the Rig Veda" from the separate 

 indexes made hy Qaunaka, knew and studied ten works ascribed to 

 this author. The last, in the list given there, is "the Smarta" or 

 work on matters relating to traditional laws on ceremonies. In the 

 Manavadharmacastra (III. 16) Qaunaka is also mentioned as a writer 

 on law, and in modern works, such as the Dattakamimamsa, Dattaka- 

 chandrika, Nirnayasindhu, Samskarakaustubha, Vyavaharamayiikha, 

 we find a number of clokas attributed to this Rishi. A considerable 

 portion of these verses treats of the law of adoption, and this circum- 

 stance induced me, when my attention lately was directed to the 

 Hindu law, to make a search for the (^aunaka-smriti. By the 

 recovery of this work I hoped to be enabled to decide a rather difficult 

 question regarding the unconditional right of Hindu widows to adopt 

 a son, which arises out of a reading, given by one of the modern 

 law-books. Besides, as I believed with Professor Stenzler,f that the 

 Caunaka-smriti treated exclusively of adoption, I expected to gain 



* M. Muller, Hist. Sk. Lit. p. 233L t See Weber Lid. Stud, Vol. I. p. 



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