the Holy Qur’ān has been handed down intact, every word and every letter of it, while Ḥadīth cannot claim that purity. All these considerations show that the saying that Ḥadīth must be judged by Holy Qur’ān is quite in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Prophet, and there is really no ground for doubting its genuineness. Even if there were no such saying, the test therein suggested would still have been the right test, because the Holy Qur’ān deals with the principles of the Islamic law while Ḥadīth deals with its details, and it is just and reasonable that only such details should be accepted as are in consonance with the principles. Again, as the Holy Prophet is plainly represented in the Holy Qur’ān as not following “aught save that which is revealed” to him58 and as not disobeying a word of that which was revealed to him,59 it follows clearly that if there is anything in the Ḥadīth which is not in consonance with the Holy

Qur’ān, it could not have proceeded from the Holy Prophet, and must, therefore, be rejected.

How far did the Collectors apply these tests?

But the question arises as to whether all the collectors paid equal regard to the above canons of criticism. It is clear that they did not. The earliest of them, Bukhārī, is, by a happy coincidence, also the soundest. He was not only most careful in accepting the trustworthiness of the narrators but he also paid the utmost attention to the last of the critical tests enumerated above: the test of judging Ḥadīth by the Holy Qur’ān. Many of his books and chapters are headed by Qur’ānic verses, and occasionally he has contented himself with a verse of the Qur’ān in support of his text. This shows that his criticism of Ḥadīth was not limited to a mere examination of the guarantors, as every European critic seems to think, but that he also applied other tests. The act of criticism was, of course, applied mentally and one should not expect a record of the processes of that criticism in the book itself. So with the other collectors. They followed the necessary rules of criticism but were not all equally careful, nor did they all possess equal critical acumen or experience. Indeed, they sometimes intentionally relaxed the rules of criticism, both as regards the examination of the narrators and the critical tests. They