Imatges de pàgina
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be open to various interpretations (see Mayne's Hindu Law and Usage,' p. 52), but there is fairly good evidence (Polybius, xii. 7, 732, following Timæus) that the Spartans practised polyandry. What I doubt (with Mr. L. H. Morgan) is the importance of the place assigned by Mr. McLennan to polyandry in the evolution of society. It serves as a caution against being too much impressed by the antiquity of the Indian and Greek examples to be reminded that the President de Brosses accused the Venetian aristocracy of practising the polyandry of brothers in the early part of the eighteenth century ('Lettres Écrites d'Italie, tom. i. p. 157). The Spartan and Venetian aristocracies were both noted for their want of delicacy in sexual relations, and in both cases the cause of the practice seems to have been the levy of public taxation on separate households which did not come into existence without separate marriages. The usage seems to me one which circumstances overpowering morality and decency might at any time call into existence. It is known to have arisen in the native Indian army.

CHAPTER V.

ROYAL SUCCESSION AND THE SALIC LAW.

In the legal history of those Western societies which have passed through feudalism, Succession to Property and Succession to Thrones are intimately connected together. When Bruce and Baliol, with ten other competitors, conduct a litigation before Edward I. of England respecting the right to the Scottish Crown, the arguments are not distinguishable in principle from arguments on the inheritance of an ordinary fief, and in point of fact this famous dispute did settle some points in the law of succession to land all over the West. But the law systems of the East, which contain an elaborate law of succession to private property, contain little or nothing about succession to thrones. One reigning Mahommedan house, that of the Ottoman Sultans, has continued to our day a system of royal succession of the highest antiquity—that under which the eldest male relative is preferred in the succession to the son; but there is no clear connection between this rule and any part of the abundant private

law of inheritance declared by the Mahommedan doctors. At most we may trace a resemblance in the places respectively assigned to the son and to the paternal uncle in the Mahommedan scheme. Indeed, of all systems of succession to property, the Mahommedan system is the most difficult to adjust to royal successions. It is a system of minute fractional division between a number of relatives whose grouping1 nobody seems to me to have as yet successfully explained. I agree with Sir George Campbell, that it must have grown up among a race whose property was easily divided into units, and possibly consisted of flocks and herds; and, again, I think that Mr. Almaric Rumsey ('Mohammedan Law of Inheritance') has conclusively shown that its greatest apparent difficulties arise from the fact that, whatever was the algebraical knowledge of later Mahommedans, the earliest expositors of this law were ignorant of some simple principles in the manipulation of fractions. On the whole, we must at present be satisfied with the orthodox Mahommedan explanation of the rules, which is, that they rest upon separate utterances of authorities supposed to speak with Divine authority-of the Prophet, his companions, and those who talked with them; and that they are not therefore necessarily reducible to systematic order.

The difficulty is caused by the composition of the class of Mahommedan Inheritors known as the Sharers. The two remaining classes seem to exhibit the usual preference of Agnates to Cognates.

But Even so

The Hindu law of succession has more authentic claims than that of the Mahommedans to a religious origin. Some of its principles can be applied without much difficulty to a royal succession; but nevertheless it is essentially a law of succession to private property. It is somewhat remarkable that we learn little from the ancient Hindu lawyers of the rules under which a King should succeed. For when they have once recognised the King as an important auxiliary of the Brahman, they are not chary of advice to him or of opinions on his duties. First of all, he is to execute justice and maintain truth. much more than this is inculcated on him. old an authority as Apastamba (II. x. 25. 1) tells him how to build a city and a palace. The palace shall stand in the heart of the town. In front of it there shall be a hall. That is called the Hall of Invitation. At a little distance from the town to the south he shall cause to be built an assembly house, with doors on the south and on the north sides, so that one can see what passes inside and outside. In all these three places fires shall burn constantly, and oblations shall be offered in them daily, or at the daily sacrifice of a householder. In this hall he shall put up his guests, at least those who are learned in the Vedas. Rooms, a couch, meat and drink should be given to them according to their good qualities. But let not the king live better than his spiritual directors

or his ministers.' Elsewhere he is taught how to amuse himself with dice, 'in even numbers, made of vibhitaka wood;' how to appoint administrative deputies; how to reward successful generals. Gautama compendiously lays down that the king is 'master of all with the exception of Brahmans ;' and in the later treatises, Vishnu and Manu, there are very long discussions on regal duties, the teacher even giving an account of the art of strategy and of the methods of taxation. But there is nothing about the way in which princes succeed to thrones, unless a trace of a rule be sought in a direction to a victorious king, 'not to extirpate the royal race' when he conquers a country, but to invest a prince of this race with the royal dignities. The modern Hindu applies his religious law to royal succession only by analogy, and he generally applies the oldest part of that law. The family customs which have grown up in Indian royal houses reflect the ancient rules, barely mentioned by our oldest authorities, on the subject of primogeniture and indivisible patrimony, and it is to be observed that they show a marked preference for Adoption over Collateral Succession.

The truth is, that for Oriental systems of succession to Thrones, we have to go to usages, older perhaps than the great religious movements which have swept from time to time over the East, and having, at all events, a history independent of the institutions

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