INSTITUTES

OF

HINDU LAW:

OR,

THE ORDINANCES OF MENU,

ACCORDING TO THE

GLOSS OF CULLÚCA,

COMPRISING THE

INDIAN SYSTEM OF DUTIES,

RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL.

VERBALLY TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL SANSCRIT.

WITH

A PREFACE,

BY SIR WILLIAM JONES.

THE PREFACE.

IT is a maxim in the science of legislation and government, that Laws are of no avail without manners, or, to explain the fentence more fully, that the best intended legislative provisions would have no beneficial effect even at first, and none at all in a fhort course of time, unless they were congenial to the difpofition and habits, to the religious prejudices, and approved immemorial usages, of the people, for whom they were enacted; especially if that people univerfally and fincerely believed, that all their ancient ufages and established rules of conduct had the fanction of an actual revelation from heaven: the legislature of Britain having shown, in compliance with this maxim, an intention to leave the natives of these Indian provinces in poffeffion of their own Laws, at least on the titles of contracts and inheritances, we may humbly prefume, that all future provisions, 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 province, were my principal motives for wishing to know, and have induced me at length to publish, that system 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 oldeft only, but the holiest, of legislators; a fyftem fo comprehenfive 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, Mabáyugas, 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, ascertain the precise age, when the work, now prefented to the Publick, was actually compofed: but we are in poffeffion of fome evidence, partly extrinfick and partly internal, that it is really one of the oldeft compositions exifting. Fromatext 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; so that PARA SARA probably flourished near the close of the twelfth century before CHRIST: now PARA'SARA was the grandson of another sage, 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 stamping authority on the work by the introduction of fupernatural perfonages, though VASISHT'HA may have lived many generations before the ac