According To Sir William Jones,
"Vyasa, The Son Of Parasara, Has Decided That The Veda, With Its
Angas, Or The
Six compositions deduced from it, the revealed
system of medicine, the Puranas or sacred histories, and the code
of Menu,
Were four works of supreme authority, which ought never
to be shaken by arguments merely human." The last is believed by
the Hindoos "to have been promulged in the beginning of time, by
Menu, son or grandson of Brahma," and "first of created beings";
and Brahma is said to have "taught his laws to Menu in a hundred
thousand verses, which Menu explained to the primitive world in
the very words of the book now translated." Others affirm that
they have undergone successive abridgments for the convenience of
mortals, "while the gods of the lower heaven and the band of
celestial musicians are engaged in studying the primary
code." - "A number of glosses or comments on Menu were composed by
the Munis, or old philosophers, whose treatises, together with
that before us, constitute the Dherma Sastra, in a collective
sense, or Body of Law." Culluca Bhatta was one of the more modern
of these.
Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith
that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;
but after all, it was but a caravansary which supplied refreshment
to the traveller, and directed him farther on his way to Isphahan
or Bagdat. Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing
of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not
sentenced to any caste.
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