But with this class of works there must have been from ancient times another which treated of the fire-ritual, and of which the more modern representatives are the extant S[=u]tras.

It is with S[=u]tras that legal literature begins, but these differ from the ritualistic S[=u]tras.

Yet both are full of religious meat.

In these collections, even in the more special, there is no arrangement that corresponds to western ideas of order.

In a completed code, for example, there is a rough distribution of subjects under different heads, but the attempt is only tentative, and each work presents the appearance of a heterogeneous mass of regulations and laws, from which one must pick out the law for which he is seeking.