Imatges de pàgina
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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 comprehensive and. fo minutely exact, that it may be confidered as the Inftitutes of Hindu Law, preparatory to the copious Digeft, which has lately been compiled by Pandits of eminent learning, and introductory perhaps to a Code which may fupply 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, Mahájugas, 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 him 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

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really one of the oldeft compofitions exifting. 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 firft 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 ftyle, 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 refemble that of the Véda, particularly in a departure from the

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more modern grammatical forms; whence it muft, at first view, feem 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 first monarchies established in Egypt or Afia: but, having had the fingular good fortune to procure ancient copies of eleven Upanishads, with a very perfpicuous comment, I am enabled to fix, with more exactnefs, 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, can at present be only afferted. The Sanferit of the three first Védas, (I need not here speak of the fourth) that of the Mánava Dherma Saftra, and that of the Puránas, differ from each other in pretty exact proportion to the Latin of NUMA, from whofe laws entire sentences 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 feveral 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 thefe Institutes, and

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about 600 before the Puránas and Itihafas, which, I am fully convinced, were not the productions of VYA'SA; fo that, if the fon of PARA'SARA committed the traditional Védas to writing in the Sanfcrit of his father's time, the original of this book muft have received its prefent form about 880 years before CHRIST'S birth. If the texts, indeed, which VYA'SA collected, had been actually written in a much older dialect, by the fages preceding him, we muft inquire into the greatest poffible age of the Védas themselves: now one of the longest and finest Upanishads in the second Véda contains three lifts, in a regular feries upwards, of at most forty-two pupils and preceptors, who fucceffively received and tranfmitted (probably by oral tradition) the doctrines contained in that Upanishad; and as the old Indian priefts were students at fifteen, and instructors at twenty-five, we cannot allow more than ten years, on an average, for each interval between the respective traditions; whence, as there are forty fuch intervals, in two of the lifts between VYA'SA, who arranged the whole work, and AYA'SYA, who is extolled at the beginning of it, and just as many, in the third lift, between the compiler and YA'JNYAWALCYA, who makes the principal figure in it, we find the higheft age of the Yajur Véda to be 1580 years before the birth of our Saviour, (which would make it older than the five books of MOSES) and that of our Indian law tract about

1280 years before the fame epoch. The former date, however, feems the more probable of the two, because the Hindu fages are faid to have delivered their knowledge orally, and the very word Sruta, which we often fee used for the Véda itself, means what was heard; not to infist that CULLU'CA expressly declares the fenfe of the Véda to be conveyed in the language of VYA'SA. Whether MENU or

MENUS in the nominative and MENO's in an oblique cafe, was the fame perfonage with MrNos, let others determine; but he muft indubitably have been far older than the work, which contains his laws, and though perhaps he was never in Crete, yet fome of his inftitutions may well have been adopted in that ifland, whence LYCURGUS, a century or two afterwards, may have imported them to Sparta.

THERE is certainly a ftrong resemblance, though obfcured and faded by time, between our MENU with his divine Bull, whom he names as DHERMA himself, or the genius of abstract justice, and the MNEUES of Egypt with his companion or fymbol Apis; and, though we should be conftantly on our guard against the delusion of etymological conjecture, yet we cannot but admit that MINOs and MNEUES, or Mneuis, have only Greek terminations, but that the crude noun is compofed of the fame radical letters both in Greek and in Sanferit.

That APIs and MNEUIS,' fays the Analyst of ancient Mythology, were both reprefen⚫tations

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