THE PREFACE. IT T 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 firft, 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 universally 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 leaft on the titles of contracts and inheritances, we may humbly prefume, that all future provi fions, for the adminiftration of juftice 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 those manners and opinions can be fully and accurately known. Thefe confiderations, and a few others more immediately within my province, were my principal motives for wifhing to know, and have induced me at length to publifh, that fyftem 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 firft of created beings, and not the oldeft only, but the holieft, of legif lators; 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 astronomical cycles, Yugas, Maháyugas, Calpas, and Menwantaras, in attempting to calcu late 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, afcertain the precife age, when the work, now presented to the publick, was actually composed; but we are in poffeffion of fome evidence, partly extrinfick and partly internal, that it is really one of the oldest compositions existing. From a text of PARA ́SARA, discovered by Mr. DAVIS, it appears, that the vernal equinox had gone back from the tenth de gree of Bharani to the first of Afwini, or twentythree 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; fo that PARA ́SARA probably flourished near the close of the twelfth century before CHRIST: now PARA SARA was the grandson of another fage, named VASISHT'HA, who is often mentioned in the Laws of MENU, and once as contemporary with the divine BHRIGU b |