and became the progenitor of mankind, who from him are called Mánaváb; nor can we, fo clouded are the old hiftory and chronology of India with fables and allegories, ascertain the precife 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 oldest compofitions exifting: From atext 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 philosopher, 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 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

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 fmallest reafon to think affectedly obfolete) are widely different from the language and metrical rules of CA'LI DA's, who unquestionably wrote before the beginning of our era; and the dialect of MENU is even observed in many paffages to resemble that of the Veda, 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 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 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 shall on this occasion give me credit for a few very curious facts, which, though capable of strict proof, can at present be only afferted. The Sanfcrit of the three firft Védas (I need not here

fpeak 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 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 Sanfcrit 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 ComVYA'SA; mitted the traditional Védas to writing in the Sanfcrit of his father's time, the original of this book must have received its prefent 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 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 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, seems 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 infist, that CULLU'CA expressly declares the sense of the Véda to be conveyed in the language of VYA'S A. Whether MENU, or MENUS in the nominative and MENO's in an oblique cafe, was the fame 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 some 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 compofed of the fame radical letters both in Greek and in Sanferit. That APIs and MNEUIs, fays 'the Analyst of ancient Mythology, were both representations of fome perfonage, appears from 'the teftimony of LYCOPHRON and his scholiaft; ' 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 firft 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 foul, and a great

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promoter of civil fociety, which he benefited. by his laws; that thofe laws were unwritten, and "received by him from the chief Egyptian deity