Manusmriti

Manusmrti

Anonymous / tradition (attributed pseudonymously to the primordial lawgiver Manu) · compiled c. AD 100-200, drawing on older Dharmasutra material; a minority view dates parts as early as the 2nd century BC · North India (India) · law

Manusmriti systematizes a full Brahmanical social and religious order, the duties proper to each varna and life-stage, rules of purity, marriage, inheritance, and criminal punishment, becoming the single most influential and most contested legal-religious text in the pre-modern Hindu tradition. Its exact place of composition is unknown.