'In

which are wholly in aphoristic prose), and even more modern than books (like Vishnu and Vasishtha*) which are partly in prose and partly in verse. the whole of Vedic (that is Hindu scriptural) literature,' says Max Müller, 'there is no work written, like Manu, in the regular epic sloka, and the continuous employment of this metre is a characteristic mark of post-Vedic writings.' Manu, therefore, in spite of its great modern reputation, belongs to the Hindu Apocrypha. Nor is it believed that we have the book in its original form. Dr. Jolly (preface to Vishnu) speaks of the abundant evidence' for its having undergone modifications and entire transformations in successive periods.

The result of all this literary investigation and discussion is, that no book has had so many dates attributed to it as the book of Manu. Sir W. Jones placed its age at 1280 B.C., Schlegel at 1000 B.C., Elphinstone at 900 B.C., Monier Williams at about the fifth century B.C., Max Müller at not earlier than 200 B.C. But the high authority of the late Dr. Burnell is now cited for so late an age of the original book as 400 A.D., and it has even been attributed in

hayana in the same volume, and his most important chapters in West and Bühler's Digest of Hindu Law. This writer is regarded by learned Hindus as an extremely old authority, but the extant text is in a very untrustworthy condition, as may be seen from Dr. Bühler's Introduction. Vishnu is translated by Jolly in vol. v. of the Sacred Books.

4 Ibid.

its present form either to the eleventh or the fourteenth century of our era. (See Nelson, 'Scientific Study of Hindu Law,' p. 37.) It is as though it were thought doubtful whether a particular work were composed at the fabulous date of the Taking of Troy, or at the historical date of the Battle of Bannockburn. The book itself, however, purports to be coeval with the creation of the world, and I suppose that a Hindu holding the opinions now considered orthodox would be bound to claim for it an indefinitely high antiquity. At the same time, its audacious pretension to be of divine origin is outdone in some of the writings now shown to be older, for the so-called Code of Vishnu professes to have been dictated by one of the Persons of the Hindu Trinity to the Goddess of the Earth.

When this sacred legal literature of the Hindus is surveyed in its entirety, it is impossible not to recognise the plausibility of the modern theories of its origin. No one treatise, and still less the aggregate of treatises, is the production of an individual man or of an individual mind. The literature is the gradual growth of schools of learned Brahmans, which are still found in India. They are companies or corporations of men devoted to sacred learning. Perhaps the nearest analogy to their work is to be found in the labours of the Benedictines. But the comparison must not be pushed too far. The conception

of a celibate order appears to have been unknown to the early Hindus. Each school was either in its beginning an actual family, or, if originally it was a mere collection of voluntary pupils sitting at the feet of a teacher, it tended to shape itself upon the model of the family, as the only known form of permanent association. The distinction between one school and another probably consisted in the particular set of authorities (as it would now be, the particular standard books) which it followed; and, as it went on from generation to generation, it was recruited partly by voluntary adherence and partly by hereditary descent. The double process is clearly reflected in the text of one of our oldest authorities, Apastamba. The student desirous of being initiated into sacred learning is to go to a man in whose family it is hereditary, who himself possesses it, and who is devout in following the law' (Apastamba, I. i. 1. 11). On the other hand, the pupil is directed to consider the teachers of his teacher as his ancestors (Apastamba, I. i. 7. 12). This view of the relation of teacher and pupil has by no means died out in India. The Hindus still regard' a school consisting of a succession of teachers and pupils as a spiritual family' (Dr. Bühler, loc. cit.) And according to the letter of the law recognised by the Indian Courts, though not perhaps according to the actual practice, teacher and pupil still inherit from one another, just

as they did in the remote days of Apastamba, who lays down that, on failure of the nearer kinsmen, 'the spiritual teacher inherits, and in failure of the spiritual teacher a pupil shall take the deceased's wealth, and use it for religious works for the deceased's benefit, or he may himself enjoy it' (II. vi. 14. 3).

There are analogies to this sacredness and strictness of literary relations in the literary history of two societies with little or no intellectual likeness to the Hindus. Mr. Grote's theory of the Homeric poetry, taken in a mass (ii. 176–178), is that it was the aggregate production, not of one man, but of a gens or clan of Homeridæ, of whom Homer was the name-giving ancestor, real or supposed, the divine or semi-divine eponymus or progenitor, in whose name and glory the individuality of every member of the gens was merged.' 'Homer is no individual, but the divine or heroic father of the Homerids, the ideas of worship and ancestry, coalescing, as they constantly did, in the Grecian mind.' A still nearer analogy is one which, like many others, occurs in the ancient legal literature of the Irish. 'Literary fosterage,' I wrote in a former work (Early History of Institutions,' p. 242), ' was an institution nearly connected with the existence of the Brehon law schools, and it consisted of the various relations established between the Brehon teacher and the pupils he received into his house for instruction in the Brehon lore.

5

While

However it may surprise us that the connection between Schoolmaster and Pupil was regarded as peculiarly sacred by the ancient Irish and as closely resembling natural fatherhood, the Brehon tracts leave no room for doubt on the point. It is expressly laid down that it created the same Patria Potestas as actual paternity; and the literary foster-father, though he teaches gratuitously, has a claim through life upon portions of the property of the literary fosterson. Thus the Brehon with his pupils constituted, not a school in our sense, but a true family. the ordinary foster-father was bound by the law to give education of some kind to his foster-childrento the sons of Chiefs instruction in riding, shooting with the bow, swimming, and chess-playing, and instruction to their daughters in sewing, cutting out, and embroidery-the Brehon trained his foster-sons in learning of the highest dignity, the lore of the chief literary profession. He took payment, but it was the law which settled it for him. It was part of his status, and not the result of a bargain.'

On the whole, few literary theories of modern mintage have more to recommend them than that which Professor Max Müller first gave of the large

5 The literary foster-father has the power of pronouncing judgment and proof and witness upon the foster-pupil, as has the father upon the son, and the Church upon her tenant of ecclesiastical lands (Ancient Laws of Ireland, ii. 349).