Nietzsche, manu, circumcision

[Guest guest]

In _The Twilight of the idols_, Nietzsche writes of the dietary laws in

the _maanavadharmashaastra_:

 

'The success of such sanitary police measures was inevitable: murderous

epidemics, ghastly venereal diseases, and thereupon again "the law of the

knife", ordaining circumcision for male children and the removal of the

internal labia for female children.' I can find no reference at all in

the _maanavadharmashaastra_ to

anything that seems to resemble circumcision. Where did Nietzsche get

this idea?

 

P. Ernest, University of Toronto.