Texts with Electronic Editions
Dharmaśāstra and Hindu law have been a research focus at UT-Austin for more than thirty years. Until recently, searchable versions of Dharmaśāstra texts existed only for the major source texts (mūlasmṛti), at repositories such as GRETIL or SARIT (thanks especially to the pioneering efforts of several Japanese scholars in the late 1990s). The voluminous later commentarial and digest literature, however, had not been transcribed. After an initial collaborative transcription and publication of the Mitākṣarā commentary in 2017, Patrick Olivelle dedicated great time and effort during the COVID-19 pandemic and after to transcribing many other important commentaries and digests. All the editions are offered as open educational resources under a CC BY-SA Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Warning to users: Almost none of the transcriptions on this site have been proofread and many mistakes exist in the files. Where available, scanned originals have also been linked for convenient double-checking. Users are strongly encouraged to double check all transcriptions against an original print source or scan before citing a text.
Root-texts (Dharmaśāstras)
- Dharmasūtras, earliest texts of the dharma tradition in one file
- Dakṣasmṛti, short mūlasmṛti
Commentaries (bhāṣya, ṭikā, vṛtti, etc.) by root-text
Āpastamba-dharmasūtra
Āpastamba-gṛhyasūtra
Gautama-dharmasūtra
- Haradatta’s commentary (Mitākṣarā) on Gautama-dharmasūtra
- Maskarin’s commentary on the Gautamadharmasūtra
- Parallel Edition of Maskarin & Haradatta commentaries (side-by-side, with root-text)
Mānava-dharmaśāstra
- Bhāruci’s Commentary on the Mānava-dharmaśāstra
- Govindarāja’s Commentary on the Mānavadharmaśāstra
- Manubhāṣya of Medhātithi, commentary on the Mānava-dharmaśāstra
Pārāśarasmṛti
- Pārāśara-mādhavīya, commentary on the Parāśara-smṛti
Yājñavalkya-dharmaśāstra
- Aparārka’s Commentary on the Yājñavalkya-dharmaśāstra
- Bālakrīḍā of Viśvarūpa, commentary on the Yājñavalkya-dharmaśāstra
- Mitākṣarā of Vijñāneśvara, commentary on the Yājñavalkya-dharmaśāstra
Digests (nibandha) by title
- Dāyabhāga of Jīmūtavāhana, treatise on inheritance
- Divyatattva of Raghunandana Bhaṭṭācārya, digest on ordeals and oaths
- Kṛtyakalpataru by Lakṣmīdhara, digest (four volumes on gifts, legal procedure, kingship, and liberation available)
- Sāmānya-praghaṭṭaka of the Tristhalīsetu by Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa, digest on pilgrimage
- Sarasvatīvilāsa by Pratāparudra, digest on legal procedure
- Smṛticandrikā by Devaṇabhaṭṭa, major digest in five volumes
- Vyavahāracintāmaṇi of Vācaspati Miśra, treatise on legal procedure
- Vyavahāranirṇaya of Varadarāja, digest on legal procedure
Cooperative Annotated Bibliography of Hindu Law
Repository of more than 3000 citations to scholarly works on Dharmaśāstra and Hindu law.