4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST particular,5 Medhatithi is more concerned with Kashmir,6 although he was not ignorant of the rest of the sub-continent. As we will see, this shift in time and space provides us with a context within which to locate and understand the changing interpretation Medhatithi offers to the prescriptions pertaining to the household, found in the Manusmrti. Both Medhatithi's objectives as well as his techniques of commentary are significant. The Manusmrti begins with the aim of propounding a definition of dharma which would have universal validity.7 Medhatithi, however, evidently did not regard the text as self-explanatory. Implicit in this was the perception that its claim to universality was in effect contested, possibly by alternative prescriptions or practices. In his attempt to reconcile the text with the context with which he was familiar, Medhatithi reflects on such differences. Medhatithi's comment on the very first sutra of the text reveals some of the problems he encountered. He contrasts Panini's work on grammar, the Ashtadhyayi, with the Manusmrti. In the former, he points out, the sutras are short and clear and even children are familiar with the work. As opposed to this, the Manusmrti is large, full of descriptions, and conducive to purusartha. Implicitly, it was both less well-known and less well-understood. At the same time, it was recognised as valuable in elucidating social, political, and moral norms. Thus, it appears as if Medhatithi was trying to introduce or reinforce the norms enunciated in the Manusmrti in a situation where the text or traditions associated with it were not recognised as authoritative or self-evident. For whatever reason, the straight forward imposition or reiteration of the concerns of the original was viewed as inadequate. Instead, some prescriptions were glossed over lightly, others were elaborated at length, whereas yet others were explicitly or implicitly negated. Medhtithi attempts to rework the text through his commentary by adopting a number of strategies. These include brief comments, which often *explain1 terms by providing more or less equivalent alternatives.8 Other terms are redefined,9 while in other cases exceptions are suggested which would virtually negate the significance of the original text.10 In other instances, distinctions are made between statements which are recognised as vidhi, injunctions or prescriptions, and others regarded as arthavada or descriptive.11 For example, where the Manusmrti professes to lay down the sasvata dharma12 the eternal norms governing the relationship between men and women, Medhatithi dismisses the world sasvata as an example of praise or stuti, used to underline the importance of what follows, but with little prescriptive value. This dismissal of the notion of perpetual norms opens the way for reinterpretation. In another instance, the claim of the original text to represent akhila dharma