the whole work. About the same period, Kurnată, a king, was famed for patronizing the same learned men who attained such fame at the court of Vikrůmadityŭ. A short time before this, Bookmunů, a king, entertained at his court a number of learned men, and amongst them Madhŭvacharyŭ, who wrote the Ŭdhikŭrănŭ-mala, a work on the Meemangsŭků philosophy. Dhavěků, a poet, of the same age, received from king Shreehurshu, 100,000 roopees, for a poem called Rutnu-mala. At the court of Růnůsinghu, raja of Kashmēēru, several learned men acquired great fame; among the rest Vayŭbhŭtă, Mămmătă, and Koiyătă. The first wrote remarks on the Sungskritŭ language; Múmmătă wrote the Kavyŭ-průkashů, and Koiyŭtů a large comment on Paninee's grammar. King Bhoju, who assembled many learned men at his court, is mentioned as being himself the author of Bhoju-bhashyň, a work on the Patŭnjălă philosophy. To Soondurů, the son Goonů-sindhoo, the king of Kanchee-poorů, several poems are ascribed. At the courts of Průtyapadityŭ and Adishōōrů, numbers of learned men were entertained.

And thus the Hindoo courts, filled with learned men, who could boast of works on every science then known to the world, presented, it must be confessed, a most imposing spectacle: a people who could produce works on philosophy and theology like the védús, and the dŭrshunŭs; on civil and canon law, like the smritees; whose poets were capable of writing the Mahabharătă, the Ramayŭnů, and the Shree-Bhagăvătă; whose libraries contained works on philology, astronomy, medicine, the arts, &c. and whose colleges were filled with learned men and students, can never be placed among barbarians, though they may have been inferior to the Greeks and

Romans.

The author is not aware, that he can present any thing to his reader which will throw more light on the degree of civilization to which the Hindoos had attained in ancient times, than the following extract from the table of contents prefixed to the work of Munoo, one of the most celebrated among the Hindoo sages. "Of the duties of kings: a king is fire and air; he, both sun and moon; he, the god of criminal justice; he, the genius of wealth; he, the regent of water; he, the lord of the firmament; he is a powerful divinity, who appears in a human shape.'-On the necessity of

a king's inflicting punishments; the dreadful consequences to a kingdom of neglecting punishment; a king must act in his own dominions with justice; chastise his foreign enemies with rigour; he must form a council of bramhuns; and appoint eight ministers, having one confidential counsellor, a bramhun;-other officers to be appointed; their proper qualifications;-qualities of an ambassador;-the commander in chief must regulate the forces;-the proper situation for a capital; necessity of a fortress near the capital; if possible, a fortress of mountains ;-of a king's marriage; of his domestic priest, and domestic religion;-of collectors of the revenue;—a king's duty in time of war, and when engaged in battle; he must never recede from combat;-of prizes in war;-of exercising the troops;-of officers and troops for the protection of districts;—of the king's servants ;-of governors of towns ;-of levying of taxes ;-learned bramhuns to pay no taxes; a learned bramhun must never be allowed so to want as to be afflicted with hunger, or the whole kingdom will perish; -of secrecy in council;-of a king's consulting his ministers; of the important subjects to be debated in council;-the nature of making war;-of invading the country of an enemy ;—of forming alliances ;—of the conduct of a king in his house, respecting his food, his pleasures, the divisions of his time, his dress, his employments;of a king's sitting in a court of justice; he must decide causes each day, one after another, under the eighteen principal titles of law, viz. on debt; ownership; concerns among partners; subtracting of what has been given; non-payment of wages or hire; non-performance of agreements; succession of sale and purchase; disputes between master and servant; contests on boundaries; assault; slander; larceny; robbery and other violence; adultery; altercation between man and wife; their several duties; the law of inheritance; of gaming with dice, and with living creatures; -when the king cannot preside, let him appoint a bramhun as chief judge with three assessors. 'In whatever country three bramhuns, particularly skilled in the three several védés, sit together, with the very learned bramhun appointed by the king, the wise call that assembly the court of Brimha with four faces.' The importance of justice, and the evils of injustice;—on the necessity of condign punishments;—no shōodrů may interpret the law or sit as judge: 'of that king who stupidly looks on, while a shōodră decides causes, the kingdom itself shall be embarrassed,

F

like a cow in a deep mire.' A king or a judge must not promote litigation, nor neglect a lawsuit ;-the evidence of three persons required ;—who may be witnesses. The judge is to call upon a bramhun for his simple declaration; to a shōōdrü, address a sentence like the following, on the evils of perjury: the fruit of every virtuous act, which thou hast done, O good man, since thy birth, shall depart from thee to dogs, if thou deviate in speech from the truth;'-false evidence may be given. from benevolent motives: such evidence, wise men call the speech of the gods; it is only necessary for such a false witness to make an offering to the goddess of learning;'-oaths may be properly taken ;-a priest is to swear by his veracity; a soldier by his horse, elephant, or weapon; a merchant by his kine, grain or gold; a mechanic by imprecating on his own head, if he speak falsely, all possible crimes ;—on great occasions, a witness may hold fire, or dive under water, or severally touch the heads of his children and wife. Punishments for perjury: a perjured bramhun must be banished, a perjured shōōdrů fined and banished;-evil of unjust punishments;-of copper, silver, and gold weights;-rates of interest ;-of sureties ;-of deposits;-of sales ;-of shares in common concerns ;-of gifts;-of nonpayment of wages; —of breaking engagements ;-of disposing girls in marriage with blemishes;-of disputes among owners and feeders of cattle ;-of boundaries for land;-of defamatory words;-of criminal punishments;-of injuries to man or beast ;-‘a wife, a son, a servant, a pupil, and a younger whole brother, may be corrected,. when they commit faults, with a rope, or the small shoot of a cane, only on the back of their bodies ;'- men who have committed offences, and have received from kings the punishment due to them, go pure to heaven, and become as innocent as those who have done well;'-of fines; a twice born-man, who is travelling, and whose provisions are scanty, shall not be fined for taking only two sugarcanes, or two esculent roots, from the field of another man;'-of the law of adultery;-of manslaughter ;—a man not to be punished for adultery if the female consent ;-a low man who makes love to a damsel of high birth, ought to be punished corporally-regulations for markets;-of tolls and freight; at sea there can be no settled freight;'-of the charges for crossing rivers ;-a woman two months pregnant, a religious beggar, a hermit in the third order, and bramhuns who are students in theology, shall not be obliged to pay toll for their passage ;-' a wife, a

son, and a slave, are declared to have in general no wealth exclusively their own ;' a bramhún may seize without hesitation, if he be distressed for a subsistence, the goods of his shōodră slave;'—of the treatment of women; women to be restrained; things by which a wife may be ensnared; women have no business with the védus;-duties respecting children; if a shoodru's wife should have no son, the husband's brother, or near relation, may raise up one son to his brother;-a widow may never marry; but if a shōōdrů have died childless, a brother may cohabit with his widow, for the sake of raising up an heir to his brother, but no farther;—if a person die before the consummation of his marriage, his brother may be lawfully married to the damsel who has been betrothed to him ;-how far a husband may be separated from a wife, and a wife from a husband ;-a truly bad wife may be superseded: a barren wife may be superseded in the eighth year; if a wife, legally superseded, shall depart in wrath from the house, she must instantly be put in confinement, or abandoned in the presence of the whole family ;-the wife of the same cast must attend personally on her husband;-a girl should be married before she is eight years old; the youth should be excellent and handsome ;-if a damsel being marriageable should wait three years, she may choose a bridegroom for herself of equal rank; if she choose her husband, she must not carry her ornaments with her to her husband's house ;-of the law of inheritance; after the death of the father and mother, the brothers divide the property, or the oldest may take all, and the rest live under him, as they lived under their father; the younger brothers to behave to the eldest as to their father; the eldest brother is to have a twentieth share, the middlemost a fortieth, the youngest an eightieth; to the unmarried daugters by the same mother each of the brothers may give a fourth part of his share ;-of different kinds of sons ;-who is to perform the obsequies for a deceased relation ;-if an eunuch marry, and have a son by a man legally appointed, that son may inherit;-on games of chance; gamesters to be punished;-the breaker of idols made of clay to be fined ;-a king must not punish a bramhun for stealing, if he stole to make a sacrifice perfect,' ""* &c.

A peruse of the other law books of the Hindoos would convince the reader, that

Sir W. Jones's translation of Munoo.

These

the Hindoo lawgivers had closely studied the principles of jurisprudence. works regulate the forms of administering justice; as, the qualifications of a judge; the assistants he should emply; the hours proper for sitting on the seat of justice; whose evidence must first be heard; for whom he may appoint council to plead; what kind of sureties may be admitted; how a judge may examine a cause by ordeal, and by what kind of ordeal,* where neither oral nor written evidence remain; whether

* The following account of the nine kinds of ordeal, formerly practised by the Hindoos, is translated from the Pureeksha-tuttwů, a work by Rughoo-nundŭnů: 1. Toola. In this ordeal the accused person is weighed ; and after bathing, is weighed again. If, with his wet clothes, he be lighter than he was before bathing, he is acquitted; if heavier, he is considered guilty 2. The trial by fire: the accused person makes nine square marks in the ground, each sixteen fingers wide, leaving betwixt each square an empty space, sixteen fingers wide; he then, through a bramhun, worships certain god, and afterwards makes an iron ball red hot, and worships it; after bathing, and clothing himself in new apparel, he sits with his face to the east, near the bramhun who performs the ceremonies, who puts into his hands some ŭshwŭtt'h'ŭ leaves, barley corns, and dōōrva grass, and then the red hot ball; taking which in his open hands, he walks through seven of the nine squares, and then, putting his foot in the eighth square, he lets the ball fall upon some kooshŭ grass in the ninth. After this, he rubs some grains of rice between his hands, and if the skin break, or his hands appear sore, be is supposed to be guilty; if not, he is declared innocent. In the latter case, he entertains the bramhŭns, &c. 3. The next mode of ordeal is with water: the accused person, accompanied by two or three others, proceeds to a pool of clean water; where he worships a number of gods, and, while a kshůtriyŭ shoots an arrow, bathes, and then, descending up to the middle in the water, immerses himself. If he be able to remain under water till a person has leisurely walked to the place where the arrow fell, he is declared innocent, if not, he is considered guilty, in which case he receives the punishment which the shastră has decreed for the alleged offence. 4. The fourth mode of ordeal is with poison: if the person charged with the offence be a female, she accompanies a bramhŭn and others to some temple, where the bramhun, in her name, worships a number of gods, particularly Shivů, and offers a burnt sacri fice; after which she bathes, dresses in a new garment, and purifies herself by incantations repeated by the bramhun, who next puts on her forehead a paper called jŭyŭ-půtrů, viz. the victory-giving paper; and upon this paper writes some such words as these in Sungskritŭ: “I am charged with criminal conduct with the son of such a person. To prove that this is a false charge, I enter upon this ordeal." The accused next takes the poison in her hand, and repeating incantations, and, calling on the sun, the fire, and the brambŭns, to bear witness, she prays, that if the crime alleged be true, the poison may destroy her; if false, that it may become as the water of life; and then swallows it: if, in the course of the day, she die, she is supposed to be guilty; if she sustain no injury, she is pronounced innocent. 5. The next ordeal is called koshu, in which the person, after the same. preparatory ceremonies as in the last, takes part of a libation, and sips it up, praying, that if he be guilty, this water may bring on him the greatest injuries, and that if innocent, it may be as the water of life. If in seven days, the accused meet with no trouble or sickness, he is declared innocent. 6. Tundoolu, the name of another ordeal, is preceded by the same ceremonies of bathing, putting on a new garment, visiting a temple, worshipping certain gods, &c. after which the officiating bramhun causes the accused to eat three handfuls of wet rice, which has been offered to some deity, with the usual imprecations, and to spit upon a leaf of the Ficus Indicus, when, if he throw up blood, he is pronounced guilty; if not, he rewards the bramhuns. 7. In the tuptă-mashŭké ordeal, after the preparatory ceremonies, the accused must put his hand into a pan of boiling clarified butter, and bring from the bottom a golden ball, about the size of a pea. If his hand be not in the least burnt, his innocence is established. 8. Phalu is resorted to when a person has stolen a cow. In this ordeal, after the usual ceremonies, the accused must draw his tongue along a piece of red hot iron, eight fingers long, and four fingers broad.

If