﻿4 CO A SUPPLEMENT TO THE EiSAY 



Munis was preternatural, and that no limit could be 

 roc to Divine power. By the same recourse to mira- 

 cles or to prophesy, he would have answered another 

 objection equally fatal to his chronological system. It 

 is agreed by all, that the lawyer Yagyawa\cya was an 

 attendant on the court of Janaca, whose daughter 

 Sita was the constant but unfortunate wife of the 

 great Ratori,, the hero or V almic% poem ; but that 

 lawyer himself, a: the very openiivj; of his work, which 

 now lies before me, names both Parasara ;.uid Vyasa 

 among twenty authors, whose tracts form the body of 

 original Indian law. By the way, since Vas'ishtha is 

 more than once named in the Manavisanhita, we mav 

 be certain that the laws ascribed to Menu, in what- 

 ever age they might have been first promulgated, 

 could not have received the form in which we now 

 see them, above three thousand years ago. The age 

 and functions of Garga lead to consequences yet 

 more interesting : he was confessedly the purohita, or 

 officiating priest, of Cr'ishna himself, who, when 

 only a herdsman's boy at Mafhara, revealed his divine 

 character to Garga, by running to him with more than 

 mortal benignity on his countenance, when the priest 

 had invoked Narayan. His daughter was eminent 

 for her piety and her learning, and the Brahmens 

 admit, without considering the consequence of 

 their admission, that she is thus addressed in the 

 Veda itself : Yata urdhzvan no va samopi, Gargi, esha 

 adityo dyaraurdhanan tafiati, dya va bhanin tapati, 

 bhumya subhran tapat^xtcan tapatl, antaran tapaty- 

 anantaran tapatl ; or, " That Sun, O daughter of 

 " Garga, than which nothing is higher, to which no- 

 44 thing is equal, enlightens the summit of the sky ; 

 " with the sky enlightens the earth ; with the earth 

 " enlightens the lower worlds; enlightens the higher 

 '.' worlds, enlightens other worlds; it enlightens the 

 " breast, enlightens all besides the breast." — From 

 these facts, which the Brahmans cannot deny, and from 



