Samayâkârika-sûtras, that a thief, for instance, shall go to the king with flying hair, carrying a club on his shoulder, and tell him his deed. And the king shall give him a blow with that club, and if the thief dies, his sin is expiated. Or the thief may throw himself into the fire, or he may kill himself by diminishing daily his portion of food'. Codes of law can only belong to a political community, such as Athens, or Sparta, or Rome, or the Roman Empire. We might have in India codes of law for the kingdoms of the Kurus and the Pândus, of Asoka or Kandragupta, but not for Mânavas, taken in the sense of mankind in general. Fortunately we are now able to go behind these socalled Law-books of Manu, Yâgñavalkya, and others, which formerly were supposed to be of extraordinary antiquity, but which are now known to be mere metrical rifacimenti of older prose books, which we still possess under the name of Sûtras2. There is nothing like these Sûtras in any other literature, so far as I know. They still belong to the Vedic age, though not to the Veda, properly so called 3, and are collections, not of laws, but of ancient customs. They are divided into three classes, (1) the Samayâkârika-sûtras, (2) the Grihya-sûtras, (3) the Srauta-sûtras. The first class contains a description of the Âkâras, i. e. the conduct, usages, and customs sanctioned by 1Â pastamba-sûtras, 7, 9, 25, 4, Bühler, Sacred Books of the East, vol. ii p 82. 2 See Professor Bühler's masterly treatment of this subject in the Preface to his translation of the Laws of Manu, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv. * See Bühler, Sacred Books of the East, vol. ii. p. 120. samaya, i. e. agreement. Most of these, which are also called Dharma-sutras, are embodied in the later metrical codes. The second class describes the smaller domestic usages and ceremonies, to be observed at the various periods in a man's life, at his birth, initiation, marriage, daily sacrifices, and death. These two are mostly incorporated in the so-called Law-books. The third class describes the great sacrifices, which are based on Sruti or revelation. The same sacrifices had been fully, but less systematically and clearly, described in the Brahmanas. Though there is a natural element in these great sacrifices also, it is greatly overlaid by priestly inventions. Thus while in other countries our excellent folklorists have to collect with great trouble what is left of usages, popular amusements, customs and superstitions, in India all this has been done for us, and has been done not once, but in a number of Brahmanic families. No doubt to a Hindu whatever is prescribed in these Sûtras is invested with a sacred character. What is not, in India? But that does not prevent us from recognising in most of the customs or âkâras in India simple usages, originating because they were natural, preserved because they proved useful, and at last supported by a divine authority, because both their naturalness and their usefulness had been forgotten. LECTURE XX. SACRED BOOKS. What is a Sacred Book? LL Sacred Books came to us from the East: not ALL one of them has been conceived, composed, or written down in Europe. It is sometimes difficult to say what is a Sacred Book, and what is not. When I undertook some years ago, with the help of the best Oriental scholars in Europe and India, to publish translations of all the Sacred Books of the East, it was by no means easy for us to determine what books should be included or excluded. It was suggested that those books only should be considered as sacred which professed to be revealed, or to be directly communicated by the Deity to the great teachers of mankind. But it was soon found that very few, if any, of the books themselves put forward that claim. Such a claim was generally advanced and formulated by a later generation, and chiefly by theologians, in support of that infallible authority which they wished to secure for the books on which their teaching was founded. But even that was by no means a general rule, and we should have had to exclude the Sacred Books of the Buddhists, of the followers of Confucius and Lao-zze, possibly even the Old Testament, as looked upon in early times by the Jews themselves, if we had kept to that defini tion. So we agreed to treat as Sacred Books all those which had been formally recognised by religious communities as constituting the highest authority in matters of religion, which had received a kind of canonical sanction, and might therefore be appealed to for deciding any disputed points of faith, morality, or ceremonial. We should not treat the Homeric poems, for instance, as Sacred Books, because, though Herodotus tells us that Homer and Hesiod made the gods of the Greeks-whatever that may mean-neither the Odyssey nor the Iliad was ever intended to teach religion. There are many books which have exercised a far greater influence on religious faith and moral conduct than the Bibles of the world. Such are, for instance, the Imitatio Christi by Thomas à Kempis, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Dante's Divina Comedia, or in Southern India the Kural. But none of these works received any canonical sanction; their doctrines were not binding, and might be accepted or rejected without peril. The Five Birthplaces of Sacred Books. There are five countries only which have been the birthplace of Sacred Pooks: (1) India, (2) Persia, (3) China, (4) Palestine, (5) Arabia. Survey of Sacred Books. I can do no more to-day than give you a very short account of the Sacred Books of the East. I may hope that by this time no one will ask what some thirty years ago an eminent London publisher asked Professor Wilson, when he offered him a translation of the Rig-veda. And pray, Sir,' he said, What is the Rig-veda?' The collection of translations of the Sacred Books of the East, which through the liberal patronage of the Indian Government and the University of Oxford I have been enabled to publish during the last twelve years amounts now to thirty-six volumes. It seems a long list, and yet it is only a beginning, though I trust that the next generation will carry on the work, and thus render the religious thoughts of the ancient world more and more accessible and intelligible to all who care for the sacred records of Natural Religion-for the Bibles of the whole human race. India. India holds no doubt the foremost rank as the mother of four great religions, each with its own code of sacred writings. The Veda. We have in India, first of all, the Vedic religion, the most ancient faith of the Aryan race of which we have any literary records. Its records have been preserved to us in four collections of sacred poetry (mantras), called the Rig-vedasamhitâ, the Yagur-veda-samhitâ, in two texts, the mixed (Taittirîya) and the unmixed (Vâgasaneyi), the Sâma-veda-samhitâ, and the Atharva-veda-samhitâ. The most important by far is the Rig-veda-samhitâ, the original collection of sacred hymns, as preserved in different Brahmanic families. The Yagur-veda and Sâma-veda-samhitâs are collections made for liturgical purposes. The Atharva-veda contains, besides large portions taken from the Rig-veda, some curious remnants of popular and magical poetry. These deserve |