1. The Teacher and the Annual Course of Study
24. Tradition says that only a Brahmin can be a teacher.
25. In times of adversity a Brahmin may study under a Kṣatriya or a Vaiśya 26. and walk behind him.
27. But after that time the Brahmin shall walk ahead.
5.
1. After commencing the annual study of all the Vedas and the Upaniṣads, Vedic recitation is suspended for that day.
2. After completing the Vedic study he should not go away immediately.
3. If he is in a hurry to leave, he should do his private Vedic recitation in the presence of the teacher and then go as he pleases. In this manner good fortune comes to both.
2. Conduct towards the Teacher
4. If a teacher comes to visit a pupil of his who has returned home, the pupil should go out to meet him, clasp his feet - and he should not wash afterwards, showing abhorrence for it - make the teacher go ahead, fetch the necessary articles, and pay homage to him in the prescribed manner.
5. When his teacher is present, he should use a seat, bed, food, refreshments, and clothes of lower quality than his teacher’s.
6. Standing up and supporting the water pot with his left hand, he should pour water for his teacher to sip; 7. he should do the same for other distinguished guests.
8. He should seek to follow his teacher in rising, sitting, strolling, and smiling.
9. In the presence of his teacher, he should refrain from:
voiding urine or excrement, breaking wind, speaking in a loud voice, laughing, spitting, cleaning his teeth, blowing his nose, frowning, clapping, and cracking his finger joints, 10. as well as from embracing or speaking to his wife or children tenderly.
11. He should refrain from interrupting his teacher 12. or his superiors, 13. and from calumniating and reviling any creature 14. or some Vedas by comparing them unfavourably with another.
15. If he fails to excel in a particular Veda, let him return to his teacher and, observing the vows, master it.
3. Rules for a Teacher
16. These are the restrictions that a teacher should observe from the commencement of the annual course of Vedic study until its completion:
He should abstain from shaving the hair on his body, eating meat, partaking of an ancestral offering, and sexual intercourse.
17. He may optionally have sex with his wife during her season.
18. In accordance with the Vedic precepts, he should be intent on imparting Vedic knowledge to his pupils and on observing the restrictions. If he acts in this manner, he will bring bliss to his ancestors, to his descendants, and to himself.
19. When a man shuns sensual objects with his mind, speech, breath, sight, and hearing, objects to which the skin, the penis, and the stomach cling, he becomes fit for immortality.
6.
1. If he has any doubt about the caste or conduct of someone who has come to him for the sake of the Law, he should kindle the sacred fire and ask him about his caste and conduct.
2. Should the man vouch for his uprightness, the teacher should declare:
‘Fire, who sees, Wind, who listens, and Sun, who reveals––they vouch for his uprightness.
May he be upright and free from sin’,
- and then set about teaching him.
4. Reception of Guests
3. A guest comes blazing like a fire. 4. When someone has studied one branch from each of the Vedas in accordance with the Law, he is called a ‘Vedic scholar’:
5. When such a man comes to the home of a householder devoted to the Law proper to him - and he comes for no other purpose than to discharge the Law - then he is called a ‘guest’. 6. By paying him homage, the householder obtains peace and heaven.
7. He should go out to meet the guest, receive him according to his age, and have a seat brought for him–– 8. if possible, some say, a seat that has many legs. 9. He should wash the guest’s feet.
Some say that this should be done by a pair of Śūdras, 10. one of them being employed in pouring the water. 11. He should have water brought for the guest; according to some, in a clay pot.
12. If the guest is a student who has not yet returned home, there is no need to have water brought for him; 13. in his case, however, there is the additional requirement to perform the Vedic recitation along with him.
14. After addressing the guest with kind words, the host should refresh him with drinks and food, or at a minimum with some water, 15. and offer him a room, a bed, a mattress, a pillow with a cover, and lotion.
16. He should summon his cook and give him rice or barley to be prepared for the guest:
17. When the food has been dished out, he should look at it, thinking: ‘Is this portion larger or this?’ 18. and make sure to tell the guest: ‘Take the larger portion.’
19. A man should not eat the food of someone whom he hates or who hates him, or of someone who suspects him of a sin or who is suspected of a sin; 20. ‘for that man’, it is stated, ‘eats the other’s evil.’
7.
1. This is the sacrifice to Prajāpati that a householder offers incessantly––
2. - the fire within the guests is the offertorial fire,
- the fire within his house is the householder’s fire,
- the fire used for cooking is the southern fire.
3. A man who eats before his guest eats up the vigour, prosperity, progeny, livestock, sacrifices, and good works of his family.
4. When milk is poured over it, that food is equal to an Agniṣṭoma sacrifice;
when ghee is poured over it, it is equal to an Ukthya sacrifice;
when honey is poured over it, it is equal to an Atirātra sacrifice;
when meat is poured over it, it is equal to a Dvādaśāha sacrifice;
and when water is poured over it, it procures the increase of progeny and a long life.
5. ‘Whether you hold them dear or not,’ it is stated, ‘guests lead you to heaven.’
6. When a man gives food in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, they constitute the 3 pressings of Soma;
7. when he rises as his guest gets up to leave, it constitutes the final rite of the Soma sacrifice;
8. when he addresses the guest with kind words, it constitutes the praise of the priestly fee;
9. when he follows the guest as he leaves, it constitutes the Viṣṇu steps;
10. and when he returns, it constitutes the final bath.
11. That is the procedure when a guest comes to a Brahmin.
12. If a guest comes to a king, he should have the guest treated with greater honour than himself.
13. If a guest comes to a man who has set up the 3 ritual fires, he himself should go out to meet the guest and tell him: ‘Vrātya, where did you stay? Vrātya, here is water. Vrātya, let this refresh you.’
14. Before offering his daily fire oblation, he should say softly in a hushed voice,
‘Vrātya, may you obtain whatever you have set your mind on.
Vrātya, may you obtain whatever you wish.
Vrātya, may you obtain whatever you like.
Vrātya, may you obtain whatever you desire.’
15. If a guest comes after he has arranged the fires but before he has made the offerings, he himself should go out to meet the guest and tell him: ‘Vrātya, give me leave so I may make the offerings.’
After he is given leave, he should make the offerings.
If he makes the offerings without being given leave, a Brāhmaṇa text states, he commits a sin.
16. ‘By giving shelter to guests for one night,’ it is stated, ‘a man wins earthly worlds;
with a second night he wins intermediate worlds;
with a third night heavenly worlds;
with a fourth night farthermost worlds;
and by giving shelter for an unlimited number of nights, he wins unlimited worlds.’
17. If an unaccomplished man arrives saying that he is a guest, the householder should give him a seat, water, and food, saying: ‘I give this to a Vedic scholar.’ In this way he will gain prosperity.
8.
1. If a person has already paid his respects to a guest whom he has provided with accommodation, thereafter he does not have to rise up or get off his couch to greet him.
2. Let him eat what is left over after he has fed his guests.
3. He should not consume all the savoury dishes in his house so that there is nothing left for his guests 4. or have exquisite dishes prepared for his own use.
5. A man who is capable of reciting the Veda is worthy of receiving a cow and the honey mixture, 6. as also a teacher, an officiating priest, a bath-graduate, and a king who follows the Law.
7. A cow and the honey mixture are to be given to a teacher, an officiating priest, a father-in-law, and a king, when they visit after the lapse of one year. 8. The honey mixture is made by mixing honey into curd or milk, 9. or, when they are unavailable, into water.
10. The Veda has 6 supplements:
11. 1. ritual expositions of the Veda, 2. grammar, 3. astronomy,
4. etymology, 5. phonetics, and 6. metrics.
[objection]
12. The term ‘Veda’, however, extends to the entire body of traditional texts dealing with rites undertaken on the authority of explicit Vedic injunctions or meanings implicit in Vedic statements, contradicting thereby the number given above.
[answer]
13. Experts in exegesis, on the contrary, are in agreement that supplementary texts should not be called by the name of the principal texts.
14. While he is taking his meal, if at some point he remembers that he has spurned a guest, he should stop eating and fast that day.
9.
1. On the next day he should satisfy that guest to his heart’s content and follow him as he leaves.
2. If a guest has come in a carriage, he should follow him as far as the carriage;
3. others he should follow until they give him leave to return.
4. If a guest forgets to do so, he may turn back at the village boundary.
5. Distribution of Food
5. He should make all creatures, down to dogs and Chāṇḍālas partake of the offering to All-gods.
6. Some, however, maintain that he should not give food to unworthy people.
7. An initiated man should avoid eating the leftover food of women or uninitiated men.
8. He should pour water before giving any gift; 9. within the sacrificial enclosure, however, he should follow the Vedic prescriptions.
10. The rule is that the distribution of food should be carried out in a way that does not cause inconvenience to those who receive food every day.
11. If he wants, he may deprive himself, his wife, or his son, but never his slaves or workers; 12. but he should not deprive himself to such a degree that he is unable to carry out his ritual duties.
13. Now, they also quote:
A sage’s meal is 8 mouthfuls, a forest dweller’s 16, a householder’s 22, and a student’s an unlimited quantity.
A man who has set up the 3 ritual fires, a draught ox, and a student––these 3 are able to do their tasks only if they eat. They cannot do them if they do not eat.
10.
6. Rules about Begging
1. The appropriate reasons for begging are the following:
to pay the teacher, to celebrate a marriage, to perform a sacrifice, trying to support one’s parents, and when a worthy person would have to suspend an obligatory act.
2. In such a case, the householder should investigate the supplicant’s qualities and give according to his ability.
3. The gratification of the senses, however, is not an appropriate reason for begging, and he should pay no heed to such requests.
Law with respect to Classes
7. Lawful Occupations
4. The occupations specific to a Brahmin are studying, teaching, sacrificing, officiating at sacrifices, giving gifts, receiving gifts, inheriting, and gleaning, 5. as well as appropriating things that do not belong to anybody.
6. The occupations specific to a Kṣatriya are the same, with the exception of teaching, officiating at sacrifices, and receiving gifts, and the addition of meting out punishment and warfare.
7. The occupations specific to a Vaiśya are the same as those of a Kṣatriya, with the exception of meting out punishment and warfare, and the addition of agriculture, cattle herding, and trade.
8. A man should neither choose as his officiating priest a man who is not deeply versed in the Veda or haggles over his fees, 9. nor officiate at the sacrifice of a man who does not engage in Vedic recitation.
10. In war, people should conduct themselves according to the strategies taught by those proficient in such matters.
11. Āryas condemn the killing of those who have thrown down their weapons, who have dishevelled hair, who fold their hands in supplication, or who are fleeing.
12. When those who have been instructed in the precepts go astray because of the weakness of their senses, the preceptor should impose expiation proportionate to the gravity of the infraction and in accordance with the rules.
13. If a guilty person refuses to follow his orders, he should send him to the king, 14. and the king should send him to his personal priest well versed in Law and Government.
15. The latter should compel those who are Brahmins 16. by some forcible means, except corporal punishment and slavery, and reduce them into subjection with penitential acts.
11.
1. With respect to persons belonging to other classes, the king, after he has carefully examined their actions, may impose on them even the capital punishment. 2. If there is a doubt, however, he should not impose a punishment.
3. Only after conducting a careful inquiry, including even the use of ordeals and interrogations, should a king proceed with punishment. 4. A king who behaves in this manner wins both worlds.
8. Rules of Precedence
5. The road belongs to the king, except when he meets a Brahmin;
6. and when he does, it is to the Brahmin that the road belongs.
7. All must yield to vehicles, people carrying heavy loads, the sick, and women;
8. so also must people of lower classes yield to people of higher classes.
9. For their own well-being, moreover, all must yield to fools, outcastes, drunkards, and madmen.
9. Rebirth
10. By following the righteous (dharma) path people belonging to a lower class advance in their subsequent birth to the next higher class,
11. whereas by following an unrighteous (adharma) path people belonging to a higher class descend in their subsequent birth to the next lower class.