MENU. The Menu of the Hindus are seven,— Swayambhuva (who by some is termed an incarna tion of Brahma), Swarochesa, Uttoma, Tamasa, Raivata, Chaishusha, and Satyavrata. Sir William Jones has considered Swayambhuva to have been Adam, and Satyavrata, Noah.
Menu, the name of the author of a book called the Institutes of Menu, composed at least 800 but probably years before Christ. Menu's Institutes are later than the Vedas, and show the legal, social, and political rather than the poetical and religious aspects of Brahmanism. But it is a compilation of the customs current among the various races in India; and therefore contains many contradictory passages. Many of his dicta by no means tend to elevate the condition of women. In his lengthened catalogue of things pure and impure, he, however, says the mouth of a woman is constantly pure, and ha ranks it with the running waters and the sun beam ; he suggests that their names should be agreeable, soft, clear, captivating the fancy, auspicious, ending in long vowels, resembling words of benediction. Where females are honoured, he says, there the deities are .pleased ; but where dishonoured, there all religious rites become useless ; and he declares, that in what ever house a woman not duly honoured pro nounces an imprecation, that house, with all that belongs to it, shall utterly perish. Strike not, even with a blossom, a -wife guilty of a hundred faults, says another sage,—a sentiment so delicate, that Reginald} de Born, the prince of troubadours, never uttered any more refined. Menu lays down some plain and wholesome rules for the domestic conduct of the wife ; above all, he recommends her to preserve a cheerful temper, and frugality in domestic expenses. Some of his texts savour, however, more of the anchorite than of a person conversant with mankind ; and when he commands the husband to be reverenced as a god by the virtuous wife, even though enamoured of another woman, it may be justly doubted if ever he found obedience thereto ; or the scarcely less difficult ordinance, for a whole year let a husband bear with his wife who treats him with aversion, after which probation he is permitted to separate.
Menu has imposed obligations towards the Brahman little short of adoration, but these are limited to the learned in the Vedas ; and he classes the unlearned Brahman with an elephant made of wood, or an antelope of leather, nullities save in name. And be adds further, that as liberality to a fool is useless, so is a Brahman use less if he read not the holy texts, comparing the person who gives to such an one to a husband man who, sowing seed in a barren soil, reaps no gain ; so the Brahman obtains no reward in heaven. These sentiments are repeated in
numerous texts, holding out the most powerful inducements to the Brahmanical class to cultivate their minds, since their power consists solely in their wisdom. For such there are no privileges too extensive, no homage too great. A king, even though dying with want, must not receive any tax from a Brahman learned in the Vedas. His person is sacred. Never shall the king slay a Brahman, though convicted of all possible crimes. Banishment, with person and property untouched, is the declared punishment for even the most heinous crimes. A Brahman may seize without hesitation, if he be distressed for subsistence, the goods of his Sudra slave. What prince could gain wealth by oppressing these (Brahmans), who, if angry, could frame other worlds and regents of worlds, and could give birth to new gods and mortals ? The code of Menu is still the basis of the Hindu civil jurisprudence, but is received according to the interpretations and modifications of approved commentators. Since his time the Sudra races of Hindus have ceased to be slaves, .but until the early part of the 19th century widows continued to immolate themselves on the funeral pyre of their husbands ; intermarriages between castes have become prohibited ; Brahmans have taken to soldiering, and to live apart in separate villages, or in a secluded part of the village ; caste distinctions have become more rigid, except in the interested relaxation of the Brahmans ; animal food has become prohibited to large classes of Hindus, the avowed imposts on the land doubled, and the laws less liberal towards women. —Tod's Rajasthan ; Elph. ; Cole. Myth. Hind. ; Menu by Haughton. See Mann.
MEO, a tribe of cultivators in the Dehli province, inhabiting the low hills about Gurgaon.
MER signifies a bill in Sanskrit, hence Komul mer, or properly Kumbhomer, is the hill or mountain of Kumbho ; Ajmir is the hill of Ajya, the invincible bill. IvIer is pronounced with the long e like mere in French.-7'od's Rajasthan.
MER, a race of the Aravalli, possibly noticed in the code of Menu as the. Meda who must live without the town, and maintain themselves by slaying the beasts of the forest; the Med or Mair race arc possibly meant. General Cunningham thinks the 3fer of the Aravalli are the same race.