252 



On Ancient Indian Weights, 



[No. 3, 



investigation, on the ground of its primitive and independent organisa- 

 tion, and the very ancient date at which its terms were embodied and 

 defined in writing ; while to numismatists it offers the exceptional 

 interest of possessing extant equivalents of the specified weights given 

 in the archaic documentary record which Sanskrit literature, under the 

 regained faculty of interpretation acquired by Western scholars, proves 

 to have preserved in the text of the original code of Hindu law • as 

 professedly expounded by Manu, and incorporated in the " Manava 

 Dharma Sastra." The positive epoch of this work is undetermined : 

 but it confessedly represents, in its precepts, a state of society consi- 

 derably anterior to the ultimate date of their collection and committal 

 to writing ; 3 while the body of the compilation is assigned, on specu- 

 lative 4 grounds, to from b. c. 1280 to b. c. 880. 



It is a singular and highly suggestive fact that numismatic testi- 

 mony should have already taught us to look for the site of the chief 

 seat of ancient civilisation in northern India, to the westward of the 

 upper Jumna- — a tract, for ages past, relatively impoverished, For such 

 a deduction we have now indirect, but not the less valuable, historical 

 authority, derived in parallel coincidence from the comparative geo- 

 graphy of the Vedic period, and from the verbatim text of Manu, the 

 integrity of which seems, for the major part, to have been scrupulous- 

 ly preserved. 



3. I trust that European scholars will not imagine that I desire to ignore 

 Megasthenes' statement, that the Indians had " no written laws." (Strabo, 

 xv. c. i. § 53.) This is, indeed, precisely the testimony— seeing the source from 

 whence it was derived — we should expect from what we now know of Brahmani- 

 cal policy. As to the addition tc who are ignorant even of writing," this ridi- 

 culous assertion had previously been nullified by the more accurate information 

 of Nearchus (Strabo, xv. c. i. § 67), and is further conclusively refuted by the 

 incidental evidence contained in the remarkable passage in the same work, where 

 it is stated, " At the beginning of the new year all the philosophers repair to the 

 king at the gate, and anything useful which they have committed to writing, 

 or observed tending to improve the productions of the earth, &c. &c. &c, is then 

 publicly declared." (xv c. i. § 39). 



4. Max Mutter's «« Sanskrit Literature," pp. 61, 62. " The code of Mann is 

 almost the only work in Sanskrit literature which has as yet not been assailed 

 by those who doubt the antiquity of everything Indian." 



Professor H. H. Wilson, though hesitating to admit the high antiquity of the 

 entire bulk of the composition, was fully prepared to assign many passages to a 

 date M at least" as early as 800 B.C.— Prinsep's " Essays," 1, note, p. 222. See 

 also Professor Wilson's translation of the " Rig Veda Sanhita," i. p. xlvii. 



M. Vivien de St. Martin places Manu under cc la periode des temps hero'iquss" 

 i. e., between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries B. c, and the Buddhist epoch 

 b c, 543. — "E'tude sur la Geographie etles Populations primitives de F Inde/ 

 Paris. 1859. 



