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Dharma sutra

Any of a number of manuals of human conduct that form the earliest supply of Hindu law. They consist mainly of strings (or “threads”) of terse guidelines containing the essentials of regulation relating to man and his fellows and to man and the state. The maxims cope with the sensible guidelines of caste and of human beings in their social, financial, and non secular relations. Formulated in prose, they have been supposed to be committed to reminiscence and expounded orally by lecturers-thus forming, as it had been, epitomes of sophistication lectures. Eventually these rules got here to be interspersed with stanzaic verses in numerous metres, every usually giving the substance of the rule instantly preceding it. The verses themselves became more and more standard and in the end led to the looks of works totally in verse. These metrical variations of previously existing dharma sutras came to be referred to as dharma Shastra, although in trendy occasions that term extra commonly is used to indicate the whole physique of customary guidelines and observances governing Hindu religious and social life.