“Men’s tastes and trades are multifarious, And so their ends and aims are various. The smith seeks something cracked to mend; The doctor would have sick to tend. The priest desires a devotee From whom he may extract his fee. Each craftsman makes and vends his ware, And hopes the rich man’s gold to share. My sire’s a doctor; I, a bard; Corn grinds my mother, toiling hard. All craving wealth, we each pursue, By different means, the end in view, Like people running after cows, Which too far off have strayed to browse The draught-horse seeks an easy yoke, The merry dearly like a joke, Of lovers youthful belles are fond, And thirsty frogs desire a pond.”—MUIR. LAW-BOOKS OF THE HINDOOS. =Laws of Manu.=—Of the many Indian treatises on the moral law still extant, the most important is the Institutes of Manu (_mun’oo_). Early texts transmit the idea of this venerable lawgiver, sprung from Brahma in the Vedic period. That the code now bearing his name embodies the precepts of so ancient a sage, is doubtful. The laws are written in verse. Four distinct castes are recognized, ascending through the successive grades of laborers, farmers, warriors, and princes, to the highest, which consisted of the priests of Brahma, “the soul of the universe, whom eye, tongue, mind, cannot reach,” from whose substance all men proceed and to whom all must return through various states of existence. The childlike religion of the Veda has disappeared. The word _brahma_ often occurs in the Vedas with the signification of worship, or hymn, the vehicle of worship. In the later Vedic poems it came to mean the universal but impersonal spiritual principle, all-pervading and self-existent. In Manu’s Ordinances, Brahma is endowed with personality, and a definite place is assigned him in the national religious system, as the creative spirit who made the universe before undiscerned discernible in the beginning. He, as the Creator, is united with the three-eyed thousand-named Siva (_se’vah_) the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver, in the Hindoo triad. Vishnu was the first-begotten of Brahma, a benevolent being who, to overcome the malignant agents of evil, submitted to various embodiments in human or animal form, known as _Av’atars_. Nine avatars, which the Hindoos believed to have taken place, were favorite themes of Sanscrit poetry; the tenth, still future, would result in the overthrow of the present state of things and the ushering in of a new and better era. (_Read Hopkins’s “The Ordinances of Manu.”_)