Preface

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Transferred to the
LIBRARY C? THE
UNIVERSITY OF V;i5C0NSIN
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mAnava-dherma-sAstra.
VOLUM£^ II.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
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MANAVA-DHERMA-SASTRA;
OR
THE INSTITUTES OF MENU.
EDITED BY
GRAVES CHAMNEY HAUGHTON, MA. P.R.S.
4re. Src» 4^. PROFESSOR OF HINDU LITERATURE IN THE EAST-INDIA COLLEGE^
VOLUME 11. ENGLISH TRANSLATION,
LONDON:
PRINTED BY COX AND BATLIS^ GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S IKN FIELD&
1825.
i
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INSTITUTES
HINDU LAW:
OB,
THE ORDINANCES OF MENU,
ACCOKOIMG TO THK
GLOSS OF CULLUCA.
COMPEISIMO THE
INDIAN SYSTEM OF DUTIES,
RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL.
VERBALLY TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL, WITH A PREFACE,
BY SIR WILLIAM JONES.
A NEW EDITION, COLLATED WITH THE SANSCRIT TEXT,
•T
GRAVES CHAMNEY HAUGHTON, M.A. F.R.S. &c. &c.
Profeuor of Hindu Literature in the Uatt'India College,
LONDON:
PRINTED BY COX AND BAYLIS, GRKAT QUKKN STRBKT.
1825.
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BZX:
ADVERT ISEMENT^
Having been for some time engaged in preparing the Institutes of Menu for publication in the Sanscrit lan- guage, it appeared to me, that as Sir William Jones's translation had been long out of print, a new edition would not only be acceptable to the publick at large, but more especially to those engaged in the study of the Sanscrit language, a« the great difficulty of the original text made some help of the kind indispensable. In consequence the version of the learned translator has been carefully revised and compared ; and as va- riations, though of trifling importance, have been dis- covered, they have been carefully recorded at the enc' of the work. The discrepancies in question may have arisen from some variety in the readings of the ma- nuscripts consulted by Sir William Jones. It appeared, however, advisable to take some notice of those which seemed of most importance to the Sanscrit student. The learned translator intended, as he has stated in his Preface, to mark by Italick letters all that he
a 2 had
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11 ADVERTISEMENT.
had borrowed from the Commentators on Menu, and to prmt the text of his author in Bmnan letters ; an ar- rangement that was intended to afford the reader a precise idea of the original work. It will easily be under- stood by persons accustomed to the preparation of works for the press, that a rule like this would be occasionally forgotten. And indeed it has sometimes, though rarely, occurred, that passages have been printed in Italick that should have been put in Roman letters. Every attention has therefore been paid to fulfil the transla- tor's intentions, and the reader may be certain that this singularly interesting record of antiquity is now sub- mitted to him with an exactness and fidelity not attained in the former editions. But it is fair to state, that the first imd twelfth books are those which are least literal : this is more particularly the case with the latter. The peculiarity of the doctrines contained in these books will account for the fact, and at the same time explain the difficulty the learned translator laboured under in conveying ideas so novel in their nature to the English reader. When, however, the probable antiquity of the original work, and the occasional obscurity of some of its texts, are considered, it must be conceded, that the translator has been generally happy in his interpreta- tion. The great celebrity which has attended the work
since
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ADVERTISEMENT. m
since its first appearance in England, encourages a hope that its republication will meet the approbation of those, who, though unacquainted with Oriental literature, take an interest in whatever regards the history of the human mind, and the progress of civilization, to which Euro- pean nations are under so many obligations.
G. C. HAUGHTON.
East-India College^ Herts^ 6th Jan. 1825.
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PREFACE
BT
SIR WILLIAM JONES.
It is a maxim in the science of legislation and govern- ment, that Laws are of no avail witJumt manners, or, to explain the sentence more fully, that the best intended legislative provisions would have no beneficial effect even at first, and none at all in a short course of time, unless they were congenial to the disposition and habits, to the religious prejudices, and approved immemorial usages of the people for whom they were enacted; especially if that people universally and sincerely believed, that all their ancient* usages and established rules of conduct had the sanction 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 possession of then* own Laws, at least on the titles of contracts and inheritances^ we may humbly presume, that all future provisions, for the
administration
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via THE PREFACE.
administration of justice and government in Indmy 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 possibly be attained, until those manners and opinions can be fully and accurately known. These considerations, and a few others more immediately within my province, were my principal motives for wish- ing to know, and have induced me at length to publish, that system 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, son or grandson of Brahma', or, in plain language, the first of the holiest, of legislators ; a system so comprehensive and so minutely exact, that it may be considered as the Institutes of Hindu Law, preparatory to the copious Digtsty which has lately been compiled by Pandits of eminent learning, and introductory perhaps to a Code^ which may supply the many natural defects in the old jurisprudence of this country, and, without any devia- tion from its principles, accommodate it justly to the improvements of a commercial age.
We are lost in an inextricable labyrinth of imaginary astronomical cycles, Yugasy Mahdyugas^ CalpaSy and Men- wanlaras, in attempting to calculate the time, when the
first
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THE PREFACE. IX
iSirst MfiNU^ according to the Brdhmetis, governed this worlds and became the progenitor of mankind^ who from him are called Mdnavdh; nor can we^ so clouded are the old history and chronology of India with fables and allegories, ascertain the precise age, when the work, now presented to the Publick, was actually composed; but we are in possession of some evidence, partly extrinsick and partly internal, that it is really one of the oldest compositions existing. From a text of Para'sara, dis- covered by Mr. Davis, it appears, that the vernal equi- nox had gone back from the tenth degree of Bharanl to the Jirst of Aswifi^^ or twenty -three degrees and twenty minutes^ between th^ days of that Indian philosopher, and the year of our Lord 499, when it coincided with the origin of the Mndu ecliptick ; so that Para'sara pro- bably flourished near the close of the twelfth century before Christ : now Para'sara was the grandson of an- other 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 be- fore us, are clearly fictitious and ornamental, with a design, too common among ancient lawgivers, of isitamp- ing authority on the work by the introduction of super- natural perscmages, though Vasisht'ha may have lived
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X THE PREFACE.
many generationB befoi^ the actual writer of it ; who names him^ indeed^ in one or two places^ as a philoso* pher in an earlier period. The style, however, and metre of this work (which there is not the smallest reason to think aflfectedly obsolete) are widely different from the language and metrical rules of Ca'lida's, who usBques- tionably wrote before the beginning of our era ; and the dialect of Menu is even observed, in many passages, to resemble that of the Fi^da, particulaiiy in a departure from the more modem 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 Lycurous, although the promulga* tion of them, before they were reduced to writing, might have been coeval with the first monarchies established in Egypt or Asia: but, having had the singular good fortune to procure ancient copies of eleven Upaniskade, Mdth a very perspicuous comment, I am enabled to fix with more exactness the probable age of the work be* fore us, and even to limit its highest possible age, by a mode of reasoning, which may be thought new, bnt will be found, I persuade myself, satisfactory; if the Pub- lick shall on this occasion give me credit for a few very curious facts, which, though capable of strict proof, can at present be only asserted. The Sanscrit of the
three
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THE PREFACE. XI
three first Fedas (I need not here speak of the fourth), that of the Mdnaiva Dhei^ma SdstrUy and that of the PurdnaSf differ from eaoh other in pretty exact propor- ti(m to the Zfatin of Numa, from whose laws entire s^iteDces are preserved, that of Appius, which we see in the fragments of the Twelve Tables, and that of Ci- cero, or of Lucretius, where he has not affected an obsol^;e style : if the several changes, therefore, of Sanr scrit and ZfO&n took place, as we may fairly assume, in times very nearly proportional, the V(^daa must have been written about 300 years before these Institutes, and about 600 before the Pur6nas and ItihdsM, which, I am fiilly convinced, were not the productions of Vya'sa ; so that, if the son of Para'sara committed the tradi- tional Fi^dae to writing in the Sanscrit 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'sa collected, had been actually written^ in a mudi older dialect, by the sages preceding him, we must inquire into the greatest possi* ble age of the Fi^ est and finest Upamshads in the second Vida contains three lists, in a regular series upwards, of at most farUf^two popils and preceptors, who successivdy re- ceived and transaiitted (probably by oral traditicm) the
b 2 doctrines
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Xll THE PREFACE.
doctrines contained in that Upanishad; and as the old Indian priests were students at Jiftten^ 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 fwty such intervals, in two of the lists, between Vya'sa, who arranged the whole work, and Aya'sa, who is extolled at the begin^ ning of it, and just as many, in the third list, between the compiler and Ya jnyawalcya, who makes the prin- cipal figure in it, we find the highest age of the Yajur Vddd to be 1680 years before the birth of our Saviour, (which would make it older than the five books of Mo* SEs) and that of our Indian law tract about 1280 years be- fore the same epoch. The former date, however, seems the more probable of the two, because the Hindu sages iu*e said to have delivered their knowledge orally, and the very word Sruta^ which we often see used for the VSda itself, rxie^n^ what was heard; not to insist, that CuLLu'cA expressly declares the sense of the V^da 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 personage, with Minos, let others determine ; but he must indubitably have been far older than the work, which contains his laws, and, though perhi^s he was never in Cretey yet some of his institu*
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THE PREFACE. XUl
tk>ns may weU have been adopted in that island^ whence Lycurgus, a century or two afterwards^ may have im- ported them to l^arta.
There is certainly a strong resemblance^ though ob-* soured and faded by time^ between our Menu with his divine BuU^ whom he names as Dherma himself^ or the genius of abstract justice, and the Mneues of Egypt with his companion or Bfxshol, Apis ; and, though, we should be constantly on oiu* guard against the delusion of etymological coi^ecture, yet we cannot but admit that Minos and Mneues, or Mnemsy have only Greek terminations, but that the crude noun is composed of the same radical letters both in Greek and in Sanscrit ^ That Apis and Mneuis, ^ says the Analyst of ancient Mythology, ^ were both representations, of some per- ^ sonage, appears from the testimony of Lycophron and ^ his scholii^t ; and that personage was the same, who ^ in Crete was styled Minos, and who was also repre* ^ sented 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 says, ^^ 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 most exalted sotd, and ^ a great promoter of, civil society, which he benefited
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XIV THE PREFACE.
^^ by his laws ; and those laws were unwritten, and re- ^' ceived by hhn from the chief Egyptian deity Hbkmes, ^^ who confeiTed them on the world aa a gift of the high- ^^ est importance/' He was the same, adds my learned ^ friend, with Mbnes, whom the Egyptians represented ^ as their first king and principal benefactor, who first ' sacrificed to the gods, and brought about a great change ^ in diet/ If Minos, the son of Jupitbr, whom the Cretansy from national vanity, might have made a na- tive of their own island, was reaDy the same person with Menu, the son of fiiiAHMA', we have the good for- tune to restore, by means of Indian literature, the most celebrated syistem of heathen jurisprudence, and this work might have been entitled The Laws of Minos ; but the paradox is too singular to be confidently asserted, and the geographical part of the book, with most of the allusions to natural history, must indubitably have been written after the Hindu race had settled to the south of Himdlaya. We cannot but remark that the word Menu has no relation whatever to the Moan ; and that it was the seventh^ not the first ^ of that name, whom the Brdhmens believe to have been preserved in an ark from the g^ieral deluge : him they call the Child of the Sun, to distinguish him from our legislator ; but they assign to his brother Yama the office (which the Greeks were
pleased
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THE PREFACE. XV
pleased to ecmfer oo Minos) of Judg^ m the sJwdes be- low.
The name oi Menu is clearly derived (like menes, mens^ and mind) from the root men to understand; and it sig- nifies^ as all the Pandiis agree^ intelligent, particularly in the doctrines of the V^da, which the composer of our Dherma Sdstra must have studied very diligently; since great mimbers of its texts^ changed only in a few syllables for the sake of the measure, are interspersed through the work and cited at length in the taries : the Publick may, therefore, assure themselves, that they now possess a eonsiderable part of the Hindu scripture, without the dullness of its profane ritual or much of its mystical jargcm. Da'ba Shucu'h was per* suaded, and not without sound reas Menu of the Brdhmem could be no other person than the progenitor of mankind, to whom Jews, Christians, and Musehndns unite in giving the name of Aium ; but, whoever he might have been, he is highly hcmoured by name in the Vida itself, where it is declared, that ^ what- ' ever M«nu pronounced, wa9 a medicine for the soul ;^ and the sage Vri«uispbti, now supposed to preside over the planet Jupiter, says in his own law tract, that ^ Me- ^ iru held the first rank among le|psl«i;ors„ because he ' had expressed in his code the wbok sense of the VSda ;
' that
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XVI THB PREFACE.
^ that no code was approved, which contradicted Menu ; ^ that other Sdstras^ and treatises on grammar or logick, ^ retained splendour so long only, as Mbnu, who taught
* the way to just wealth, to virtue, and to final happiness, ' was not seen in competition with them;' Vya'sa too, the son of Para'sara before mentioned, has decided, that ^ the Vida vnt\i itsAngaSj or the six compositions de- ^ duced from it, the revealed system of medicine, the ^ Purdnasy or sacred histories, and the code of Mbnu, ^ were four works of supreme authority, which ought
* never to be shaken by arguments merely human/
It is the general opinion of Panditsy that BrahmV taught his laws to Menu in a hundred thousand verses^ which Menu explained to the primitive world in the very words of the book now translated, where he names himself, after the manner of ancient sages, in the third person ; but, in a short preface to the law tract of Na'rbd, it is asserted, that ^ Menu, having written the laws of ^ Brahma' in a hundred thousand sidcas or couplets, ' arranged under twenty-four heads in a thousand chap- ^ ters, delivered the work to Na'red, the sage among ^ gods, who abridged it, for the use of mankind, in ^ twelve thousand verses, and gave them to a son of ^ Bhrigu, named Sumati, who, for greater ease to the ^ human race, reduced them to four thousand; that mor-
' tals
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THE PREFACE. XVll
^ tal« read only the second abridgement by Sumati, ^ while the gods of the lower heaven, and the band of ^ celestial musicians, are engaged in studying the pri- ^ mary code, beginning with the fifth verse, a little ^ varied, of the work now extant on earth ; but that ^ nothing remains of Na'red's abridgement, except an ^ eleguit epitome of the ninth original title on the ad- ^ ministration of justice.' Now, since these institutes consist only of two thxmsand siw hundred and eighty Jive verses, they cannot be the whole work ascribed to SuMATi, which is probably distinguished by the name of the Vrtdd^hay or ancient, Mdnava^ and cannot be found entire ; though several passages from it, which have been preserved by tradition, are occasionally cited in the new digest.
A number of glosses or comments on Menu were com- posed by the Munisy or old philosophers, whose trea- tises, together with that before us, constitute the Dher- ma Sdaira^ in acoUective sense, or Body of Law; among the more modem commentaries, that called MSdhdtifhi, that by GoVindaraja, and that by Dharani'-Dhbra, were once in the greatest repute ; but the first was rec-r koned prolix and unequal ; the second, concise but ob* scure; and the third, often erroneous. At length ap- peared CuLLUcA Bhatta; who, after a painful course
c of
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XVlll THE PREFACE.
of study and the collation of ntnnerons mannsetipts, produced a work, of which it may ^ peiiiaps, be said vety truly, that it is the shottest, yet the most himinousr^ the least ostentatious, yet the most learned, the deep- est, yet the most agreeable, commentary 6ver composed on any author azrcient or modern, European or Aiiatick. The Pandits care so little for genuine chronology, that none of them can telLmethe age of Cullx/ca, whom they always name with apfdause; but he informs us himself, that he was a Brdhmen of the Vdrendra tribe, whose family had been long settled in Gaur or Bengal, but that he had chosen his residence among the learned on the banks of the holy river at CAsi. His text and interpretation I have almost implicitly followed, though I had myself collated many copies of Menu, and among them a manuscript of a very ancient date: liis gloss is here printed in Italicks ; and any reader, who may cboose to pass it over as if unprmted, will have in Bonum letters an exact version of the original^ and may-JoimL9omeid«a of its idiom^ which must necessarily be preserved in a verbal translation ; and a translation, not scrupulously verbal; would have been highly improper in a work on so dieiH- cate a^ momentous a subject as priva^ and criminal jurtsprudenoe.
Should
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THE PREFACE. XIX
Should a series of Brdhmens omit, for three genera- tioAa, the reading of Menu^ their sacerdotal class, as all. the Pandits assure me, would in strictness be for- feited ; but they must explsun it only to their pupils of the three highest classes; and the Brdhmefi^ who read it with me, requested most earnestly, that his name might be concealed; nor would he have read it £Dr any consideration on ^ forbidden day of the moon, or with- out the ceremoiues prescribed in the second and fourth chapters for a lecture on the Veda: so great, indeed, is the idea of sanctity annexed to this book, that, when the dbiief native magistrate at Banares endeavoured, at my request, to procure a Persian translation of it, be- fore I had a hope of being at any time able to under- stand the original, the Pandits of his court imaniniously and poGHtively refused to assist in the work ; nor should I have procured it at all, if a weajlthy Hindu at Gasfd had not caused the version to be made by some of his dependants, at the desire of my friend Mr. Law. The Persian translation of Menu, like all others from the jSanscrit into that language, is a rude intermixture of the text, loosely r^idered, with some old or new com* ment, and often with the cnide notions of the translator ; itfid, though it expresses the general sense of the priginal,
c 2 yet
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XX THE PREFACE.
yet it swarms with errours, imputable partly to haste/ and partly to ignorance : thus where Menu says, that emis- saries are the eyes of a prince, the Persian phrase makes him ascribe four eyes to the person of a king ; for the word char, which means an emissary in Sanscrit, signifies four in the popular dialect.
The work, now presented to the European world, contains abundance of curious matter extremely inte- resting both to speculative lawyers and antiquaries, with many beauties, which need not be pointed out, and with many blemishes, which cannot be justified or palliated. It is a system of despotism and priestcraft, both indeed limited by law, but artfully conspiring to give mutual support, though with mutual checks; it is filled with strange conceits in metaphysicks and natural philosophy, with idle superstitions, and with a scheme of theology most obscurely figurative, and consequently liable to dangerous misconception; it abounds with minute and childish formalities, with ceremonies generally absurd and often ridiculous ; the punishments are partial and fanciful; for some crimes, dreadfully cruel, for others reprehensibly slight; and the very morals, though rigid enough on the whole, are in one or two instances (as in the case of light oaths and of pious perjury) unac*
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THE PRBPACE. 1X1
countably relaxed : nevertheless, a spirit of sublime de- votion, of benevolence to mankind, and of amiable ten* d^ness to all sentient creatures, pervades the whole work ; the style of it has a certain austere 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 Gdyatriy the Mother ^ as it is called, of the V^da^ prove the author to have adored (not the visible material sufty but) that divine and incomparably greater lights to use the words of the most venerable text in the Indian scripture, which illumines ally delights ally from which all proceedy to which all mtbst return^ and which alone can irradiate (not our visual organs merely, but our souls and) our intellects. Whatever opinion in short may be formed of Mbnu and his laws, in a country happily enlightened by sound philosophy 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 impor- tance to the political and commercial interests of Europe y and particularly by many millions of ERndu subjects, whose well directed industry would add largely to the wealth of Briiaiuy and who ask no more in retiun than
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xxii THE preface;.
proteetion for their persons and places of abode^ justice in their temporal concerns^ indidgence to the prejudices of theh: old religion, and the benefit of those laws, which they have been taught to believe sacred, and which alone they can possibly comprehend.
W, JONES,
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CONTENTS.
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