THE DHARMA SUTRAS

It is clearly manifest in his rule about the re-marriage of widows, where he enjoins the observance or Brahmacharya for a year, before she can re-marry, whereas Gautama does not ordain any intervening time between the death of her husband and her reinarriage.153 

Vasishtha, who is not much later that Baudhayana, is in substantial agreement with Baudhayana in many of his laws for women, but in some respects he displays a more ascetic tendency.

In Apastamba tills ascetic tendency finds its fullest expression among these earlier lawgivers. He plays the part of a reformer, discarding the old order as being unfit for the new. He considers himself a child of the Kali Age - the liberal rules of the past were suitable only for the older generation as they were gifted with Superior merit. 

They are not fit for the degenerate public of his times and hence new rules are necessary. He frames rules to limit the freedom of women, to lesson the undue importance of a son, to discourage widows from re marrying, to reject soils of all kinds of legal heirs to the property. 

To account for the gradual chancre ill the outlook of the lawgivers, we have to turn our attention to the times, in which they lived and worked. It was an age of asceticism. The age during which Buddha and Mahavira flourished was noted for asceticism of a rigorous type. 

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