The Manusmriti - English Translation Hardcover – 1 January 2022

The book is blessing for me

Looks like I am the first one to review this book. I just received it today and not yet started reading it. But I took a glance through the content and here's the miniscule I can say about it. First of all, the seller needs to wrap the book in some cardboard prior to packaging it in the posting envelope as its beautiful paperback cover is superiorly soft, because of which mine came with a tiny dent on its backside. That being said, to add more to its appealing physical features, the book is a nice hefty one and by the external look of it, the context within it seems seriously informative. Ofcourse it's a large read with more than 500 pages and once opened, what I liked the most about it is that, by it's font and spacing used, it did not appear very cluttered unlike other religious translated books; that looks truly inviting. Secondly, the author has given a handsome sized 'introduction' in the beginning and then followed are the direct translations of the verses till the end which to me seems quite neat and clean, allowing the reader not to be influenced by a third party judgment. Thirdly, Manusmriti has been looked down in recent or many years for it's controversial renderings in a very negative light because of the way it has affected the Indian society, and this prejudice that shrouds the basic overall understanding of this Ancient Text, generations by generations, more and more people are becoming influentialy ignorant of the fact that this 'rules and guidelines writeup' had actually been an important piece of the backbone of the beyond 10,000 years of olden Indian Civilization and there must be also something good coming out it. There are similar controversial elements attached to well known abrahamic texts but they are still cherished all over the world for whatsoever "goodness" they stand for and not simply disregarded for their discriminatory laws that make no sense to follow today within the modern society. So why be so careless about the Ancient Sanaatan Texts, our History? The reason I am writing this review so early is to express my gratitude to the author for making an effort to modernise this long lost manuscript on the living righteousness regardless what age we live in, by simply translating it from word to word, hopefully with a social message for the perceiver not to take it literally like the old fashioned religious fanatics but metaphorically with no learnings or yearnings to disrupt or disrespect someone else's lifestyle's liberty or freedom of speech. This, conservative and contemporary Hindus, both, should understand.

The media could not be loaded. It not just book!! Its an constitution of ancient aryavrata from where we have reached to this century….the book covers every aspect from where it started and whr to end….many of the rules are still to be follwd today which makes us pure and pious!! At last ill say the book teaches us how to live simple and pule to attain supreme bliss.

The media could not be loaded. All Sanatanis should have this book of laws from our father Manu Svayambhuva. Please establish the life and conduct explained in this book in your life for a healthy and prosperous Satvik living.

Books like the manusmruti somehow manage to sneak into the human fate despite the best efforts of the bona fide will of the people to get over the ideas contained in them. The manusmriti is full of mythology about the Creation and gradations of humans according to their birth and lineage that makes them not equal in society. On the face of the truth and realities of life in the world today, this book is anachronistic, and therefore, cannot be included as contributor in the present and the future endeavors of human development of the great land of Bharat or India.Speculatively composed between 200 BCE and 200 CE, and attributed to the sage Manu, a mythological progenitor of humanity, the book is in the form of a dialogue between the sages and Manu. Sages seek guidance from Manu about the moral and social imperatives for the collective life. Divided in 12 chapters, the text recommends, inter alia, a four-level "varna vyavastha" hierarchical system- that in its concept and strictures by the dominant varnas, sustained with their political and knowledge-controlling power, over the centuries of feudal dominance, has soured into castes, sub-castes, backward and forward castes, and the untouchables in the Indian society with certain rules of purity and pollution prescribed in the book.The hundred-year long struggle for independence and social cohesion created among the Indian people a loosely held umbrella worldview of a modern nation with the principle of unity-in-diversity before and after Independence in spite of fissiparous passions and hobnobbing of certain neo-political cultural and religious organizations with the imperialist rulers in the period of the independence struggle.Formation of the inclusive Indian Constitution; and the nation-wide consensus to obey and follow its directions, boons and promises; has been one of the biggest achievements of the Indian people. The Constitution of India derecognizes caste-based inequality and holds the concept of untouchability and caste-based discrimination of humans as illegal, immoral, and irrational. Books like the manusmriti make a bad reminder of the social practices that have been countered by various social reformers in the past century and are proscribed in the Constitution.Why didn't the Constitution-makers follow manusmruti or any other traditional book related to any faith as basic substance of the great thought-input in the making of the Indian Constitution!Because, for the first time in the history of the land, its people, all of them, were the ruler of their life, and were recognized as the legitimate ruler of their personal life, and so did their neighbours in the village, in the settlement, in a hamlet, in a town or in any habitation in the land. No one is less in any way than anyone else in their social standing and the chosen role. The Constitution recognizes (and protects that recognition) that the path of spiritual quest and the religious creed is the humans' personal choice, and that choice is not a determinate of the state, nor is that choice determinable by any authority than the authority of the citizen's choice. That means that the faiths are protected by the people's will. That also means that it is the people who determine their choice of faith individually and protect the individual choices of faith collectively. That trust of the people in themselves and in their constitution makes the state secular. The constitution of India, standing and moving in the continuum of the peoples' long cultural traditions with a future-oriented modern nation-making acts of its people, recognizes the globally available knowledge, continuously progressing science and rationality, Reason and reasonability of facts and phenomena, and full respect to the continuing human endeavors in arts, culture, literature, education, personal creed etc. And we have done well with it. Traditional wisdom states that if a thing works for you, don't mess with it.The manusmriti may have worked for someone somewhere sometime in the distant feudal or pre-feudal time of community control. It carries today neither a philosophical nor any sociological truism or logical contention for a just social order with universally accepted human rights, human responsibility and social values.This reader-reviewer now, sees it more critically.The book provides to the society of 200 BCE to 200CE, when it is purported to have been received from Manu- the celestial sage, certain codes of duty for everyone; the ways of "varnashrams"; laws of marriage, inheritance, rituals; and dietary practices. The Manusmruti prescribes also to the society of its time of compilation certain patriarchal norms emphasizing women's roles as subordinate to men's, a fact that restricts the women's autonomy. The rules, prescriptions, and the punishment-reward norms suggested in the book (given the antiquity of the community-control mechanisms of humans in smaller societies) reflect also the old-time lack of human progress in relation to the modern time. This fact shows up the feudal or early feudal political contexts of that time, and the mythical belief it propagates as the source of legitimacy of its recommended law. In order to strengthen its mythical character and the then "varna vyavastha", the writer/s or compiler/s collateralize to their prescriptive texts a rub of Vedanta philosophy to lend grandeur to its recommendations. It juxtaposes its ascriptive and prescriptive identity-providing mythical apparatus with dharma and cosmic moral order.There is always a time lag between the corpus of knowledge generated in the universe of human mind, and poured forth in the social man's mind, and the action required of the collectivity to evolve socially and politically out of that. But the society has since gotten enough time since the days of the book's operationalization!!The manusmruti is one of the many books available to humanity which have, to be polite, 'served their cause' long long ago and they do not have utility for the betterment of human life today as much as the Upanishads and the Gita, for example, do continue to have. Things have all changed, and our minds have evolved with the choices that we can entertain to enlarge and enliven our scope of spirituality, knowledge and skills of earning a livelihood.By the common sense, what part of world population; or for that matter, of Indian population today would give its approbation to the kind of social hierarchical status by birth, and the routine order of life recommended or prescribed in the book!! What has the varna vyavastha come to today!! Untouchability, compulsory non-education, and superiority-inferiority imperatives, just by the reason of birth is absolutely unacceptable and ridiculous. In every ancient spiritual book, there are two fields of thought. One- that belongs to that time with imperative or normative details; and Two- that belongs to all the times. The Gita also has certain contexts which are, and which have always been useful, and will be useful; but some parts which aren't today. It is common knowledge.Most potent source of legitimacy for a system of law and the social rules (for the collective and individual endeavors for a safe life, happiness and pursuits of knowledge and freedom from ignorance and accidents) is the context and the presence of the grand corpus of knowledge that the humanity has presented to itself. Knowledge is freedom from ignorance says the holy book of every society. Totality of Knowledge, restricted once to various local hues of epistemology, ontology and cosmology- has flourished in their numerous branches, inflorescences and specializations in today's university providing a vortex context for directing the Present to the Future in Politics, Spirituality-Science synergy, the Law, and the inner and the outer Peace, Progress; and above all, Natural and hastened Evolution of the mind, heart and life.Bramah is Satchidanand. Concept of the origin of human species from a humanized God's different body parts, perceived or understood variously or differently by the locals, is unthinkable in the knowledge we have today. How can matter, energy and consciousness in the universe be indiscreet to create life in a logic that is as regressive as putting humans one above the other? Social and economic inequality in the world is human phenomenon with the humanity's least evolved, auto-regulated, animalistic survival and acquisitive sub-consciousness. Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, who knew the physical and the social science of his time as much as the ancient sources of knowledge like Upanishads and Puranas and ample Sanskrit, Latin and English literature of the later times (including the manusmriti), calls this basic consciousness Nescience. Look, what he, with his learning and self-experienced inner peace writes in his magnum opus: The Life Divine (1939) : "(The Nescience) is the stock with which the material universe commences: consciousness and knowledge emerge at first in obscure infinitesimal movements, at points, in little quanta which associate themselves together; there is a tardy and difficult evolution, a slowly increasing organization and ameliorated mechanism of the workings of consciousness, more and more gains are written in the blank slate of Nescience." (Part 2, Chapter 1, para 1). He also says that Nature wills and facilitates humans to evolve mentally, but one can by yogic efforts hasten this process to achieve mental status higher than Nescience, that is : Mental and Supra-Mental life. We all know, by now, that nothing becomes final in the quest of knowledge and freedom; and yet we make progress in the humanity's recent step in her fate of duality trying to make ascent to the vast silent wisdom of eternity; and certainly not to divide but to unite people around us.The manusmriti, in spite of the mentions of Vedanta in passing, ends up as a tool of ancient feudal system to perpetuate social inequality which has no locus standi in the evolved social, economic and political structures like market-economy-based elite democracy, and yet more evolved and revolutionary systems of people's regimes based on total human equality, peace and happiness on earth that will have much more opportunities for the people to work for a life in higher domains of consciousness and peace. We, the potential readers of books are expected to be responsible people and not, say, like Jose Ortega's collectivity of the "Mass Man". Hear the awakened vox populi and read that by the commonsense. Do not humanize God.Make humans god-like by raising them higher in knowledge and potential, if you can.Humans' access to knowledge has never ever been easier than it is today.So should be their capacity to know the direction.

Everyone should read this book to know the truth of our ancient social laws and even today can be apply for society.

book was well packed and received…content also good for me

Too small a print. Difficult to read.