tual 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 reafon 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 dialet of MENU is even observed in many passages to resemble that of the Véda, particularly in a departure from the more modern grammatical forms; whence it must 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 eftablifhed 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 possible age, by a mode of reasoning, which may be thought new, but will be found, I perfuade myself, fatisfactory; if the Publick shall on this occafion give me credit for a few very curious facts, which, though capable of ftrict proof, can at prefent be only afferted. The Sanfcrit of the three firft Védas (I need not here

Ipeak of the fourth,) that of the Mánava Dberma Sáftra, and that of the Puránas, differ from each other in pretty exact proportion to the Latin of NUMA, from whofe laws entire fentences are preserved, 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 obfolete 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 600 before the Puránas and Itibáfas, which, I am fully convinced, were not the productions of VYA'SA; fo that, if the son of PARA'SARA committed the traditional Védas to writing in the Sanfcrit of his father's time, the original of this book must have received its present form about 880 years before CHRIST's birth. If the texts, indeed, which VYA'S A collected, had been actually written, in a much older dialect, by the fages preceding him, we must inquire into the greatest poffible age of the Védas themselves: now one of the longest and fineft Upanishads in the fecond Véda contains three lifts, in a regular series 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 In

dian priests were students at fifteen, and inftructors 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 YAJNYAWALCYA, who makes the principal figure in it, we find the highest age of the Yajur Veda 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 lawtract 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 beard; not to infift, that CULLU'CA expressly declares the fenfe of the Veda to be conveyed in the language of VYA'SA. Whether MENU, or MENUS in the nominative and MENo's in an oblique case, was the same perfonage with MINos, let others determine; but he must 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 island, whence

LYCURGUS a century or two afterwards may have imported them to Sparta.

There is certainly a strong 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 constantly on our guard against the delufion of etymological conjecture, yet we cannot but admit that MINOS and MNEUES, or Mneuis, have only Greek terminations, but that the crude noun is composed of the fame radical letters both in Greek and in Sanfcrit. 'That APIs and MNEUIS, fays 'the Analyst of ancient Mythology, were both representations of fome perfonage, appears from 'the teftimony of LYCOPHRON and his scholiast; ' and that perfonage was the fame, who in Crete

was ftyled MINOS, and who was alfo repre'fented under the emblem of the Minotaur: • DIODORUS, who confines him to Egypt, speaks ' of him by the title of the bull Mneuis, as the 'first lawgiver, and fays, "That he lived after "the age of the gods and heroes, when a change was made in the manner of life among men; that " he was a man of a moft exalted soul, and a great

66

promoter of civil fociety, which he benefited

by his laws; that thofe laws were unwritten, and "received by him from the chief Egyptian deity

VOL. V.

"HERMES, who conferred them on the world “as a gift of the highest importance." He was ❝ the fame, adds my learned friend, with MENES, 'whom the Egyptians reprefented as their first king and principal benefactor, who first sacrificed 'to the gods, and brought about a great change

in diet.' If MINOS, the fon of JUPITER, whom the Cretans, from national vanity, might have made a native of their own island, was really the fame perfon with MENU, the son of BRAHMA', we have the good fortune to restore, by means of Indian literature, the most celebrated fyftem of heathen jurisprudence, and this work might have been entitled The Laws of Minos; but the paradox is too fingular to be confidently afferted, and the geographical part of the book, with most of the allufions to natural history, muft indubitably have been written after the Hindu race had fettled to the fouth of Himalaya. We cannot but remark that the word MENU has no relation whatever to the Moon; and that it was the feventh, not the first, of that name, whom the Bráhmens believe to have been preserved in an ark from the general deluge: him they call the Child of the Sun, to distinguish him from our legiflator; but they affign to his brother YAMA the office (which the Greeks were pleased to confer on MINOs) of Judge in the fades b‹lɔw.