পাতা:ব্যবস্থা-দর্পণঃ প্রথম খণ্ড.djvu/৮

] Ꮩ Besidies the usual matters treated of in a code of laws, the lughu, Sanhitti os Manu, which comprises in all 2,685 shlokas or couplets, audis divided into twelve chapters, comprehends a system of cosmogony, the doctrines of metaphysics, precepts regulating the conduct, rules sor religious and ceremonial duties, pious observances, and expiation, and abstinence, moral maxims, regulations concerning things political, military, and commercial, the doctrine of rewards and punishments after death, and the transmigration of souls together with the means of attaining cternal beatitude. ?mulforum annorum meditatio me docuit,* that the laws of Afarou were promulgated in India at least as early as the seventh century before Alexander the Great, or about a thousand years before Christ. He places the Ro2nd yana of Vilniki at about the same date, and doubts which of them was the older. Elphinstone, who is inclined to attribute great antiquity to the institutes of Manzu on the ground of difference between the law and manners therein recorded and those of modern times, and from the proportion of the changes which took place before the invasion of Alexander the Great, infers that a considerable period had elapsed between the promulgation of the code and the latter epoch ; andohe fixes the prQbable date of Manu, to use his own words ** very loosely" somewhere about half way between Alexander (in the fourth century before Christ, ) and the Wedas (in the fourteenth.) Professor Wilson thinks that the work of Manu, as we now possess it, is not of so ancient a date as the Ramóyana : and that it was most probably composed about the end of the third or commencement of the second century before Christ. Sir William Jones's inference, foauded on a consideration of the style, is however opposed to the learned Professor's conclusion. Sir William says, and with reason too : “the Sanscrit of the three Vedas, that of the Monava Dharma Shéistra, and that of the Purinas (of which Rimsiyana is one,) differ from each other in pretty exact proportion to the Latin of Numa. from whose laws entire sentences are preserved, that of Appias, which we see 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 the Sanserit and Latin took place, as we may fairly assume, in times very nearly proportional, the Vedas must have been written about three hundred years before these institutes and about six hundred years before the Pursinas.” He then remarks : “the dialect of Manu is even observed in many passages to resemble that of the Vedas, partieularly in a departure from the more modern grammatical forms, whence it must at first view seem very probable that the laws now brought to light were considerably older than those of Solon or even of Lycurgus, although the promulgation of them before they were reduced to writing miglit lave beell coeval with the first monarchies established in Asia.” Upon such and other grounds he sixes the date of the actual text at about the year 1280 before Christ. Thus these opinions as to the date of the institutes of Afant, being founded not on any historical or positive proof, but mere conjecture, arc, as might have been expected. contradictory and quite inconclusive. Now if the sage Närada be believed, he asserts in the preface to his law tract, that Manu, having composed the laws of Brahmá in a hundred thousand shlokas or couplets, arranged under twenty-four heads in a thousand chapters, delivered the work to him (Norada, the sage among geds,) who abridged it for the use of mankind in twelve thousand verses, and gave them to the son of Bhrigu named Sumati, who, for the greater ease of the human race, reduced them to four thousand. Tsenee it appears that Vrihać (lage) Mantz-samhitā was composed by Manu himself. The abridged metrical code of Macau samhitā in question, appears also from the text of the very work to have been composed during Mantz's time. (as will be known from the verses 58, 59, and 60, already cited.) It remains to dotermine the epoch of Asanto's existence. This in the absence of other evidence should be believed to be the same as stated in the Manic sanhita before us, that is, he slourished in the beginning of the world, being progenitor of the races human and divine. See cli. i., v. 11, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 36. Sir William Jones, after saying ‘we cannot but admit that MINos, MNEUEs, or Mncuis, have only Greek terminations, but that the crude noun is composed of the same radical letters both in Groek and Sanserit,” and leaving others to determine whether our Manus (or Menu in the nominative) the son of Brahmā was the same personage with Minos the son of Jupiter and the legislator of the Cretans (who also is supposed to be the same with Mine wis spoken of as the first lawgiver receiving his laws from the chief Egyptian deity Hermes, and Menes the first king of the Fgyptians) remarks : “Dúráshweik was persuaded, and ot without sound reason. that the first Manic of the Brithmanas could be no other person than the .íÏÇ. of mankind, to whom Jews, Christians, and Mussulmans unite in giving the name of Adapt.” 象 'The learned writor further remarks:—“The name of Manu (like Menes, mens, and mind,) is clearly derived troin the root ( nan or ) men to understand, and it signifies, as all the Pandits agree, “intelligent, particularly in.