Manusmá¹›ti
The Manusmriti (Sanskrit, f, मनुस्मृति, manusmṛti, the Code of Manu, also known under the name mānavadharmashāstra ) is an Indian text, the title of which is rendered " Code of Manu ". This text belongs to the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras that represent revelations and discussions of appropriate behavior. The Manusmriti is part of the Text group of the Smritis, which are deemed to be delivered by teachers texts (as opposed to the Shrutis that of the wise men " belonged " as texts are valid and which are of a higher authority ).
Although the present-day knowledge of politics and law in ancient India is mainly based on the knowledge of these texts, they are not to be understood as law books in the true sense. The principles set out in them rules of conduct for the four Varnas controlled the social and political processes within the subcontinent over a long period of time. The Manusmriti is not to be understood as a law book in the law, but in the normative sense. However, they show how the social and religious life should be and what it was following not desirable. The text reflects the perspective of the Brahmins. The time of origin are employed between 200 BC and 200 AD to AD.
Socio-political importance of the Manusmriti
The Manusmriti is a treatise on the Dharma, in which social obligations are codified, which today Hindus but in daily life grant no absolute authority.
It describes the duties of the four life stages: Brahma Carin ( student), Grihastha ( steward ), Vanaprastha ( in the forest solitude walking ) and Samnyasin (The World Recorded Bender). Each of these life stages is associated with its own obligations. The Manusmriti covers the samskaras ( sacraments ), the Veda - study, the marriage, the daily ceremonies that Shraddhas ( rites ), allowed and forbidden foods, ritual purity and impurity, the duties of the king. It is significant that the book of Manu begins with creation and that in the end the consequences of good and bad deeds in the life to be mentioned.
The Manusmriti is the most important source of text of ancient India to the caste system. To what extent these statements reflect the lived social reality is not fixed. Nevertheless, it is a very meaningful source about how the social life of the then Brahmin view would have been desirable. The text recommends a woman from the same caste for the first marriage of twice-born ( Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas ). " A Brahmin who takes a Shudra woman in his bed, will fall into hell ( after his death ); if he has a child from her, he will lose his rank as a Brahmin " (III, 17).
The fifth chapter deals with the purity and the compliance with purity: "If a Brahmin an untouchable, a menstruating woman, an outcast, a woman in childbed, a corpse, or someone who has touched a corpse touches, he must be purify a ritual bath. " (V, 85).
The seventh chapter is devoted to the special obligations and rights of the King ( Rajadharma ) (as well as the Arthashastra ). Even if there are reasons to believe that in the classical India was known to the republican form of government, was undoubtedly usually the king the central character of the state. The question of the divinity of his status can not be answered clearly. Although many descriptions seem to indicate a divine status, assigns its membership to the class of a Kshatriya the Brahmins against subordinate position to. This leads to a number of limitations - especially in the ritual area, which excludes a royal power within the Varna Society in absolute or divine sense. Most Indian kingship was hereditary and the king was stopped, to surround himself with ministers who were in turn supported by a widely ramified administrative apparatus that still went deep into the lower layers and in the remotest parts of the kingdom. These organizing principles can be, for example, today detected in the former Hindu kingdom of Nepal. The last king Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev ( until 2007 ) saw his was on 1 February 2005 seizure of power legitimized by him accruing from the Rajadharma obligations.
Reception of Manusmriti in Nietzsche
In his writings, Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist Friedrich Nietzsche upholds the laws of Manu against the laws of the monotheistic cultures. It reflected his view contradicts centuries of experience. He held the held in the laws of Manu caste system for naturally that based on the equality of men modern social order, however, for " decadent " and unnatural. In his view, should, like Manu, the case be separated from each other and different ( pre-) have rights. While the "Making ", the philosophers who should set laws, should the physically strong perceive the executive branch and form the " mediocre " the working majority of the population. He also prides the Manusmriti, that there the women would be described much more flattering than Christianity and their body does not apply as unclean, but rather as a particularly pure.
Nietzsche used for his adaptation of the Manusmriti a very dubious French translation of the professed anti-Semite Louis Jacolliot ( Jacolliot, Louis: Les législateurs religieux Manou, Moïse Mahomet Traditions religieuses comparées des lois de Manou, de la Bible, you Coran, you Rituel Egyptien. .. . you Zend Avesta of parses et des traditions finnoises, Paris 1876). Many cited by Nietzsche passages that appear to come from the Manusmriti, are in fact additions of Jacolliot for which can not find any old text witnesses ( for details see Andreas Urs Sommer: Ex oriente lux on the alleged, Facing: East ' in Nietzsche's Antichrist, in? : Nietzsche-Studien 28 (1999 ), pp. 194-214 ). Jacolliot represented the historically untenable theory that the Jews were originally sold chandala the Manusmriti.
For Nietzsche, the reference to Manu does not have to withdraw the basis of the purpose of returning to a pre-modern caste system, but the Christian Democratic leveling.