564644-408 THE PREFACE. T is a maxim in the science of legislation a without manners, or, to explain the fentence more fully, that the best intended legislative provifions would have no beneficial effect even at first, and none at all in a fhort courfe of time, unless they were congenial to the difpofition and habits, to the religious prejudices, and approved immemorial ufages of the people for whom they were enacted; efpecially if that people univerfally and fincerely believed, that all their ancient usages and established rules of conduct had the fanction of an actual revelation from heaven: the legislature of Britain having fhown, in compliance with this maxim, an intention to leave the natives of thefe Indian provinces in poffeffion of their own Laws, at least on the titles of contracts and inheritances, we may humbly prefume, that all future provifions, for the administration of justice and government in India, will be conformable, as far as the natives are affected by them, to the manners and opinions of the natives themselves; an object which cannot poffibly be attained, until thofe manners and opinions can be fully and accurately known. These confiderations, and a few others more immediately within my A 2 pro province, were my principal motives for wishing to know, and have induced me at length. to publish, that fyftem of duties, religious and civil, and of law in all its branches, which the Hindus firmly believe to have been promulged in the beginning of time by MENU, fon or grandfon of BRAHMA', or, in plain language, the first of created beings, and not the oldest only, but the holieft of legiflators; a fyftem fo comprehenfive and. fo minutely exact, that it may be confidered as the Inftitutes of Hindu Law, preparatory to the copious Digest, which has lately been compiled by Pandits of eminent learning, and introductory perhaps to a Code which may supply the many natural defects in the old jurifprudence of this country, and, without any deviation from its principles, accommodate it justly to the improvements of a commercial age. We are loft in an inextricable labyrinth of imaginary aftronomical cycles, Yugas, Maháyugas, Calpas, and Menwantaras, in attempting to calculate the time, when the first MENU, according to the Bráhmens, governed this world, and became the progenitor of mankind, who from himn are called Mánaváh; nor can we, fo clouded are the old history and chronology of India with fables and allegories, afcertain the precife age, when the work, now prefented to the Publick, was actually composed; but we are in poffeffion of fome evidence, partly extrinfick and partly internal, that it is really 5 really one of the oldest compofitions existing. From a text of PARA'SARA discovered by Mr. DAVIS, it appears, that the vernal equinox had gone back from the tenth degree of Bharani to the first of Afwinì, or twenty-three degrees and twenty minutes, between the days of that Indian philofopher, and the year of our Lord 499, when it coincided with the origin of the Hindu ecliptick; fo that PARA'SARA probably flourished near the clofe of the twelfth century before CHRIST; now PARA'SARA was the grandfon of another fage, named VA'SISHT'HA, who is often mentioned in the laws of MENU, and once as contemporary with the divine BHRIGU himself; but the character of BHRIGU, and the whole dramatical arrangement of the book before us, are clearly fictitious and ornamental, with a defign, too common among ancient lawgivers, of ftamping authority on the work by the introduction of fupernatural perfonages, though VA'SISHT'HA may have lived many generations before the actual writer of it, who names him, indeed, in one or two places as a philofopher in an earlier period. The style, however, and metre of this work (which there is not the smallest reason to think affectedly obfolete) are widely different from the language and metrical rules of CA'LIDA's, who unquestionably wrote before the beginning of our era; and the dialect of MENU is even obferved, in many paffages, to resemble that of the Véda, particularly in a departure from the A 3 more more modern grammatical forms; whence it muft, at first view, seem very probable, that the laws, now brought to light, were confiderably older than thofe of SOLON or even of LYCURGUS, although the promulgation of them, before they were reduced to writing, might have been coeval with the firft monarchies established in Egypt or Afia: but, having had the fingular good fortune to procure ancient copies of eleven Upanishads, with a very perspicuous comment, I am enabled to fix, with more exactness, the probable age of the work before us, and even to limit its highest poffible age by a mode of reasoning, which may be thought new, but will be found, I perfuade myself, fatisfactory; if the Publick fhall, on this occafion, give me credit for a few very curious facts, which, though capable of ftrict proof, The Sanferit can at prefent be only afferted. of the three first Védas, (I need not here fpeak of the fourth) that of the Mánava Dherma Saftra, and that of the Puranas, differ from each other in pretty exact proportion to the Latin of NUMA, from whofe laws entire fentences are preferved, that of APPIUS, which we fee in the fragments of the Twelve Tables, and that of CICERO, or of LUCRETIUS, where he has not affected an obsolete style: if the several changes, therefore, of Sanferit and Latin took place, as we may fairly affume, in times very nearly proportional, the Védas must have been written about 300 years before these Institutes, and about |