The system of Indian weights, in its local development, though necessarily asserting a minor claim to the consideration of the European world, may well maintain a leading position in the general investigation of national metrologies, on the ground of its rudimentary and independent organization, and the very ancient date at which its definitions were embodied and committed to writing; while to numismatists if offers the exceptional interest of being able to exhibit extant equivalents of the specified weights preserved in the authoritative text of the original code of Hindu law, as professedly expounded by Manu and incorporated in the Manava Dharma Shastra.
The positive epoch of this work is undertermined; but it confessedly represents, in its precepts, a state of society considerably anterior to the ultimate date of their collection and final redaction; while the body of the compilation is assigned, on speculative grounds, to something more than 400 B.C.
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