Injunctions vs electives
The more I read Manu after I’ve read world history, more I realize just how smart the ancient Indians were. They explicitly recognized the diff b/w religious injunctions & electives, & only put obligations as a duty on the twice-born, freeing hoi polloi from any guilt/sin.
It’s because you cannot mandate such restrictions on people who:
A) don’t feel connected to a common lineage with you [in the 1st century, large parts of India were un-Aryanized]; so no ancestral obligations
B) the masses can literally not live without panema et circenses.
Leeway
At the same time, Manu knows well without the support of the hoi polloi, no stable society can exist [first & foremost, from a bio-evo standpoint, Manu wants a stable order, rta over anrta, no anarchy/mass strife]. So they are given the religious sanction to do whatever they want.
At the same time, these people must also respect the priestly order that holds this entire thing up [hence it was absolutely necessary to glorify the Brahmin theoretically, far beyond what IRL is]. The fear of God keeps a society stable, & the Vedic Brahmin is his dūta on earth.
Manu also well recognizes that large chunk of the so-called twice-born will not stick to their duty, so it provides clear provisions and exceptions on how they can live their life in these times, thus giving them some religious sanction to live a life without that many holds too.
Praise
The number one complaint most have is “It is horrible that the twice-born is praised so much & on top of it in real life they don’t even do their obligations all the time” - so is it just a scam to put a certain lineage on top? Is it now?
The text assumes you are smart enough to read b/w the lines & you pay attention to the commentators. It silently nods & assents that in real life, Shudra Kings or landlords make up a plurality of the country despite technically having just the duty of serving twice-borns.
Provenance
If you want “proof” this worked, then look no further than the fact that there has been genetically confirmed tribal/caste endogamy in India for 2+ millenia.
People accepted their place as cogs in the machine, bc the machine ran smoothly, even if it was inefficient sometimes.
People who look at it like a purely religious document are absolutely missing the forest for the trees. It’s a document on how to run a stable society, & must be read from a bio-evolutionary, darwinian lens. Most of the things that don’t make sense will make sense when you do so.
Time difference, decay
Just keep two things in mind man. Stop equating stuff like Manusmriti or Arthashastra with texts of the “same genre” written 1000 years later. You are comparing the output of an extremely advanced & smart expansive classical Hindu civilization to senescent corpse of the 1500s.
Pandits of 1500s who used to write dharma-nibandhas (digests of hindu law) were incapable of even coming close to genius of Manu. I remember reading an untranslated Sanskrit work by a 16th century Bengali Brahmin who wrote a text just to seethe at Kayasthas & call them Shudras.
By 1800s, virtually no sanity left in huge bunch of Hinduism. It had absolutely failed to adapt to the modern world & was crushed by European institutions & systems in every shape. All it could do is haplessly look back to Manu & keep following him, but loosing his vision.
Can you honestly fucking imagine having caste ritual pollution taboos on kala-pani or eating food with other castes in ships as soldiers in the 1800s? In the Industrial Age? When Europe had already explored the world? God, what insanity. A decayed people by that point!
I have read virtually every travel writer from India who first came in contact with Europe or went to Europe. They all express complete frustration at the insanity & caste obsessions of Indians. This frustration wasn’t unique to India (c.f - Islamic Modernism, Meiji Japan etc).
People who lived in the time of Manu did this - (classic map showing hindu-buddhist asia).
People who lost the true vision and genius of the Classical Age let this monstrosity occur (British Indian colony map). This includes leftists who criticize and seethe at the Manusmriti, as well as trad Hindus who glorify it superficially just to uphold kala pani tier restrictions in modern times.
Have said this 100s of times before. You can be the same people genetically and become complete loosers. It’s about culture & institutions. Look at modern day Englishmen, they are a completely failed people who cannot hold a candle to Horatio Nelson or Arthur Wellesley. The existence of the British Empire in India is the lowest point in our history as a civilization, the greatest blot on our history. Far worse than anything 700 years of Turkish conquest was. It is because we fought the Turks, but we let the British in & supported them. The British were at their zenith in the arc of their civilizational history, faustian people par excellence, and we were at our Nadir. The fact we let them in, supported them, did not have a nation-state or modern institutions to combat them and then took pride in it is shameful.
Btw, the mindset of feeling the British Empire was a “good thing” for Hindus is that of a rat, of a parasitic leach, a lowly dasyu who does not have any self-respect and enjoys the comfort given to him by an alien people. The fact the direct descendants of the Aryans, the ones who spread Aryan culture & religion in all of Eurasia could fall this low, is a testimony to how whimsical Fortuna is.