MANU, matrolri (from Slat. menu, man). An ancient mythical sage of India. the progenitor of mankind, according to the Hindus, and the reputed author of the great law-book known as the Code of Mann (Skt. Manuca-Dhunna-8(ustru).
There is no good ground for accepting the ex istence of Mane as a historical personage. In the Rig Veda lie is merely the ancestor of the human race, the first one to offer a sacrifice to the gods. In the Satapatha Brahmana and in the Mahabharata he alone survives the deluge. In the first chapter of the law-book as cribed to him, he declares himself to have been produced by Viraj, who was an offspring of the Supreme Being. and to have created all this uni verse. Hindu mythology knows, moreover, a sue cession of Manus. each of whom created, in his own period, the world anew after it bad perished at the end of a mundane age.
The Aliinara-Dharma-Siistra, written in verse, is a collection of religious ordinances, customs, and traditions, snell as 'Mad naturally grow Imp by established usage and receive divine sanction in course of time. This work is not a mere law book in the European sense of the word; it is likewise a system of cosmogony; it propounds metaphysical doctrines, teaches the art of govern ment• and treats of the state of the 4onl after death. In short, it is the religious, seenlar, and spiritual code of Brahmanism. It is di
vided into twelve books. The chief topics are the following : ( 1 ) Creation ; ( 2 ) education and the duties of a pupil, or the first or der; (3) marriage and the duties of a house holder, or the second order ; (4) means of sub sistence, and personal morality; (5) diet, puri fication, and the duties of women; (6) the duties of an anchorite and an ascetic. or the duties of the third and fourth orders; (7) government, and the duties of a king and the military caste; (6) judicature and law, private and criminal; (9) of the forgoer. and the dutie$ of the commercial and servile castes; (10) Mixed castes and the duties of the castes in time of dis tress; (11) penance and expiation; (12) trans migration and final beatitude.
The text of Mann has often been edited and translated, as by Jolly, .1/Coara-1JIturnm-Sastra (London, 1887), by Mandlik, with seven native commentaries (Bombay, 1886), and in the series of the Nirnaya Sagara Press (Bombay, 1887). There are several translations; especially by Bidder, The Lows of Mann (Oxford, 1886) ; and by Burnell and Hopkins, The Ordinances of Manic (London, 1884). Consult, also, Hopkins, Mutual Relations of the Four Castes _t to the .11auevadharmacitstra»t (Leipzig, 1881) ; doly, Rceht and Sitte (Strassburg, 1896).