How Well Do You Know English Slang?  dharma sutra
("righteousness thread"), any of several manuals of human
conduct that form the earliest source of Hindu law. They consist
chiefly of strings (or "threads") of terse rules containing the
essentials of law relating to man and his fellows and to man and
the state. The maxims deal with the practical rules of caste and
of human beings in their social, economic, and religious
relations. Formulated in prose, they were intended to be
committed to memory and expounded orally by teachers-thus
forming, as it were, epitomes of class lectures. Eventually
these rules came to be interspersed with stanzaic verses in
various metres, each generally giving the substance of the rule
immediately preceding it. The verses themselves became
increasingly popular and ultimately led to the appearance of
works entirely in verse. These metrical versions of previously
existing dharmasutras came to be called dharmashastras, though
in modern times that term more commonly is used to denote