Scriptures are the Authority: Part 3

Shastra is a Sanskrit word that refers to "scriptures" like the Vedas, Ithihaas and Puranas. In one of other, perhaps lower meanings, Shastra refers to a treatise or text on a specific field of knowledge, a book or an instrument of teaching, any manual or compendium on any subject in any field of knowledge, including religious. Therefore, there are shastras like Yoga-Shastra, Nyaya-Shastra, Dharma-Shastra. In the lower meanings, the texts may not wholly represent or depict what has been mentioned in the major works like the Srutis, Ithihaas, Puranas.

The shastras are both descriptive and prescriptive. Puranas are some examples of shastras that fit this description. People who are not familiar with the teachings of Hinduism, or are not habituated to the ways that the shastras have been arranged, and who do not understand the import and purposes of the shastras often complain that they are not consistent, or in some places, even contradictory. 

Dharma-shastras, for example, contain opposing views and contradictory theories. This is in part because they represent an ideal of human behaviour, while at the same time recognising the need to account for likely failings. The shastras do not present life as it was lived. Rather they reveal an idea of what life should be. The shastra texts constitute one of the great bodies of literature of the ancient world.

Sri Swami Velukkudi Krishnan has addressed this issue of so-called inconsistency and contradictions in our shastras.