cerdotal clafs, as all the Pandits affure me, would in ftrictnefs be forfeited; but they muft explain it only to their pupils of the three highest claffes; and the Brahmen, who read it with me, requested most earnestly, that his name might be concealed; nor would he have read it for any confideration on a forbidden day of the moon, or without the ceremonies prescribed in the second and fourth chapters for a lecture on the Véda: fo great, indeed, is the idea of fanctity annexed to this book, that, when the chief native magistrate at Banares endeavoured, at my request, to procure a Perfian translation of it, before I had a hope of being at any time able to understand the original, the Pandits of his court unanimously and pofitively refused to affift in the work, nor fhould I have procured it at all, if a wealthy Hindu at Gayà had not caufed the verfion to be made by fome of his dependants, at the defire of my friend Mr LAW. The Perfian tranflation of MENU, like all others from the Sanferit into that language, is a rude intermixture of the text, loosely rendered, with fome old or new comment, and often with the crude notions of the tranflator; and, though it expreffes the general fenfe of the original, yet it fwarms with errours, imputable partly to hafte, and partly to ignorance:

thus where MENU fays, that emiffaries are the eyes of a prince, the Perfian phrase makes him afcribe four eyes to the person of a king; for the word chár, which means an emissary in Sanfcrit, figuifies four in the popular dialect.

The work, now presented to the European world, contains abundance of curious matter extremely interefting both to speculative lawyers and antiquaries, with many beauties, which need not be pointed out, and with many blemishes, which cannot be juftified or palliated. It is a fyftem of defpotifm and prieftcraft, both indeed limited by law, but artfully confpiring to give mutual fupport, though with mutual checks; it is filled with strange conceits in metaphyficks and natural philosophy, with idle fuperftitions, and with a scheme of theology most obscurely figurative, and confequently liable to dangerous mifconception; it abounds with minute and childish formalities, with ceremonies generally abfurd and often ridiculous; the punishments are partial and fanciful, for fome crimes dreadfully cruel, for others reprehenfibly flight; and the very morals, though rigid enough on the whole, are in one or two inftances (as in the cafe of light oaths and of pious perjury) unaccountably relaxed: nevertheless, a

fpirit of fublime devotion, of benevolence to mankind, and of amiable tenderness to all fentient creatures, pervades the whole work; the ftyle of it has a certain auftere majesty, that sounds like the language of legislation and extorts a respectful awe the sentiments of independence on all beings but GOD, and the harsh admonitions even to kings, are truly noble; and the many panegyricks on the Gayatri, the Mother, as it is called, of the Véda, prove the author to have adored (not the vifible material fun, but) that divine and incomparably greater light, to use the words of the most venerable text in the Indian fcripture, which illumines all, delights all, from which all proceed, to which all must return, and which alone can irradiate (not our visual organs merely, but our fouls and) our intellects. Whatever opinion in fhort may be formed of MENU and his laws, in a country happily enlightened by found philofophy and the only true revelation, it must be remembered, that those laws are actually revered, as the word of the Most High, by nations of great importance to the political and commercial interefts of Europe, and particularly by many millions of Hindu fubjects, whose well directed industry would add largely to the wealth of Britain, and who afk no more in return than protection for their perfons and places of abode,

justice in their temporal concerns, indulgence to the prejudices of their own religion, and the benefit of those laws, which they have been taught to believe facred, and which alone they can poffibly comprehend. ·

W. JONES.

THE

LAWS OF MENU,

SON OF BRAHMÁ,

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

On the Creation; with a Summary of the Contents.

1. MENU fat reclined, with his attention fixed on one object, the fupreme GOD; when the divine Sages approached him, and, after mutual falutations in due form, delivered the following addrefs:

2. Deign, fovereign ruler, to apprize us of ' the facred laws in their order, as they must be 'followed by all the four claffes, and by each of 'them, in their feveral degrees, together with the • duties of mixed class;

every

3. For thou, Lord, and thou only among 'mortals, knoweft the true fenfe, the first prin

ciple, and the prescribed ceremonies, of this 'universal, fupernatural Véda, unlimited in extent and unequalled in authority.'.