Laws of Manu
The Manusmriti ('Remembered Teaching of Manu'), also known as the Manava Dharmashastra, is the most influential Sanskrit legal, social and ethical treatise of ancient India, probably composed between the second century BCE and the third century CE by several anonymous hands who attributed the text to Manu, the legendary first man and progenitor of humanity in Hindu mythology, continuing an older tradition of dharma treatises. Structured in twelve books and around two thousand five hundred verses, the text covers an encyclopaedic range of subjects: cosmic creation, the duties (dharma) proper to each varna or caste and to each stage of life (ashrama) —student, householder, forest-dweller and renunciant—, civil and criminal law, purification rites, marriage and dietary regulations, and, at particular and controversial length, the social and familial position of women. The text establishes a strict social hierarchy based on the caste system, granting notable privileges to Brahmins as guardians of ritual and sacred knowledge while imposing severe restrictions on Shudras and those considered outside the caste system, and it advocates a subordination of women to men —to the father in childhood, to the husband in marriage, to the son in old age— that has been intensely criticised since the nineteenth century, both by Hindu reformers such as Ram Mohan Roy and Ambedkar and by contemporary feminist movements, who see in it the codification of structural caste and gender discrimination. Despite its normative character and its lasting influence on British colonial law in India, Indian social practice never uniformly or fully followed the Manusmriti, and today it is read chiefly as a fundamental historical document for understanding the evolution of law, religion and social structure in classical India, rather than as a living code of conduct.