Sec. 5.  Second Period.  Laws of Manu.  The Brahmanic Age.

Long after the age of the elder Vedas Brahmanism begins.  Its text-book is the Laws of Manu.[47] As yet Vishnu and Siva are not known.  The former is named once, the latter not at all.  The writer only knows three Vedas.  The Atharva-Veda is later.  But as Siva is mentioned in the oldest Buddhist writings, it follows that the laws of Manu are older than these.  In the time of Manu the Aryans are still living in the valley of the Ganges.  The caste system is now in full operation, and the authority of the Brahman is raised to its highest point.  The Indus and Punjaub are not mentioned; all this is forgotten.  This work could not be later than B.C. 700, or earlier than B.C. 1200.  It was probably written about B.C. 900 or B.C. 1000.  In this view agree Wilson, Lassen, Max Mueller, and Saint-Martin.  The Supreme Deity is now Brahma, and sacrifice is still the act by which one comes into relation with heaven.  Widow-burning is not mentioned in Manu; but it appears in the Mahabharata, one of the great epics, which is therefore later.

In the region of the Sarasvati, a holy river, which formerly emptied into the Indus, but is now lost in a desert, the Aryan race of India was transformed from nomads into a stable community.[48] There they received their laws, and there their first cities were erected.  There were founded the Solar and Lunar monarchies.

The Manu of the Vedas and he of the Brahmans are very different persons.  The first is called in the Vedas the father of mankind.  He also escapes from a deluge by building a ship, which he is advised to do by a fish.  He preserves the fish, which grows to a great size, and when the flood comes acts as a tow-boat to drag the ship of Manu to a mountain.[49] This account is contained in a Brahmana.

The name of Manu seems afterward to have been given by the Brahmans to the author of their code.  Some extracts from this very interesting volume we will now give, slightly abridged, from Sir William Jones’s translation.[50] From the first book, on Creation:—­

   “The universe existed in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable,
   undiscoverable, and undiscovered; as if immersed in sleep.”

   “Then the self-existing power, undiscovered himself, but making the
   world discernible, with the five elements and other principles,
   appeared in undiminished glory, dispelling the gloom.”

   “He, whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the
   external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity,
   even he, the soul of all beings, shone forth in person.

   “He having willed to produce various beings from his own divine
   substance, first with a thought created the waters, and placed in them
   a productive seed.”

   “The seed became an egg bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with
   a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born himself, in the form of
   Brahma, the great forefather of all spirits.