two or more persons may institute processes of law against one person at the same time in one court; in what way a judge is to decide upon a cause, and in what words he must pronounce sentence. In short, the wisdom which shines in many of the Hindoo civil laws, and the minute provisions made for the government of kingdoms, the administration of justice, the disposition of property; and the multiplied regulations for an exact conformity to the innumerable precepts and ceremonies connected with a splendid system of idolatry, incontrovertibly prove, that when these shastrus were written, the Hindoos must have attained a considerable degree of civilization. Notwithstanding these deserved encomiums, however, it must be confessed, that many of the Hindoo laws are exceedingly partial, and others diabolically cruel; and that, for want of humanity and probity, the administration of these laws was deeply tinged with injustice and cruelty. We infer this, partly from some of the laws themselves; but more particularly from the present state of things among the surviving If his tongue receive no injury, he is pronounced innocent. 9. In the dhŭrmujú ordeal, the officiating priest must draw the images of religion and irreligion on separate leaves of a tree; that for religion to be white, and that for irreligion black, and place them within two lumps of clay, closing up the clay, and making the outside smooth. He must then worship the images, and repeat over them a number of incantations, and afterwards put them into an empty jar. The accused now bathes, and on his return has a jǔyú-pútrǔ fastened on his forehead, after which he puts his hand into the jar, and brings out one of the lumps of clay. If it be irreligion, he is declared guilty ; if religion, innocent. The ordeal has, I understand, been abolished by the Fast India Company; but there are, at present, instances of persons voluntarily choosing this singular method of establihing their innocence. The ninth mode of ordeal is frequently chosen about trifling affairs, but,in other cases, the most common is the trial by hot clarified butter (ghee). On the 18th November, 1807, a trial by this mode of ordeal took place at a village near Nudēēya. A young married woman was charged with a criminal intrigue, while her husband was absent, but denied the charge, and offered to undergo the tŭptŭ-mashŭků ordeal. The husband prepared the requisite articles, and invited the bramhuns: when, in the presence of seven thousand spectators, she underwent this trial, by putting her hand into the boiling ghee, without receiving as is said, the least injury, though a drop of the hot liquid, falling on the hand of a bramhun to whom she was to give the golden ball which she had raised from the pan, raised a blister on his hand. The spectators, on beholding this proof of her innocence, burst forth into applauses of dhŭnya, dhŭnya, i. e. happy! happy! The whole concluded with a feast to the bramhŭns, and the virtues of this woman spread through all the neighbouring villages. My only authority for this, is that of a respectable native; but a circumstance of the same nature is related in the 395th page of the 1st. vol. of the Asiatic Researches.-A gentleman of the author's acquaintance, in the year 1814, saw at Sirdhana, a man who had been charged with embezzling the property of the Begum, go safely through the trial by fire; but this man did not retain the ball in his hand a second of time. Hindoo governments. Bribes are universally offered, as well to the judge on the bench, as to the petty constable of the village; and through every department of the native governments a system of oppression exists of which a subject of one of the states of Barbary alone can form an idea. The author has heard, that one of the reigning Hindoo princes, at this time, actually employs bands of robbers to plunder his own subjects, and that when they apply to him for redress, he either evades investigation, or grants only a mock trial. If to all this want of probity in the administration of justice, the greatest cruelty in the infliction of punishments, and rapacity in perpetual exactions, we add domestic slavery, carried to a great extent, and the almost incessant internal feuds among different chiefs, we shall cease to wonder at whole districts under the native governments having been so often depopulated; and that famine, pestilence, and war, should have so frequently laid waste some of the finest countries on the earth. When we look back to former times, when the shoōdru was tried, and punished, for offences against the regulations of the cast,* for not regularly bathing in the Ganges, for not presenting offerings to the manes of his ancestors, for neglecting an appointed atonement, or for not wearing the appropiate mark of his sect, we can easily account for the present degraded state of this class. The superintendence of the magistrate extending thus to the whole of a man's religious conduct, as well as to his civil actions, must, in addition, to the fascinating powers of a religion, full of splendid shews, public feasts, and a thousand imposing ceremonies, have tended exceedingly to rivet the fetters of superstition. It must have been a curious spectacle to see courts of justice take cognizance of a man's religious offences, (sins of omission and commission), as well as of his crimes against civil society. The pride and avarice of the bramhuns would often drag an offender before a court of justice, for having neglected those acts prescribed * During the reign of Manŭsinghŏ, a barber had made a mark on his forehead like that of a bramhŭn; and in this situation the king bowed to him, supposing he had been a bramhun; but the barber returning the salam, (which a bramhăn never does, even to a king), Manusinghu suspected that he was not a bramhŭn, and on enquiry found that he was a barber. He immediately ordered his head to be struck off. + In Hathed's Code of Gentoo Laws, there is an article, commanding the magistrate to fine a man a pǎn of couries for killing an insect. 47 But how by the shastris from which they derived their honour and emolument. greatly must the sway of the bramhuns have been increased, when the inhabitants saw their countrymen brought before the magistrate and punished, for the slightest acts of irreverence, or the most trivial injury, towards this sacred race; when they saw a neighbour's posteriors cut off, for having dared to sit on the same seat with a bramhun; when they saw another's tongue slit, for having (when provoked) insulted a bramhŭn; when they saw an iron style thrust red hot into the mouth of another, for having (no matter how justly) said to a twice-born-man thou refuse of bramhuns;' when they saw boiling oil dropped into the mouth and ears of another, for having dared to instruct a bramhun in his duty.* The author offers this abridgment of native history, not as the utmost of what may be obtained by labour and patience, even from Hindoo materials; but as the best account which his leisure would allow him to collect, and he hopes the reader, from this sketch, will be able to form some idea of the government, laws, and social state of the Hindoos. He now concludes this chapter with an extract from Sir Wm. Jones respecting the origin of this singular people: "Thus has it been proved, by clear evidence and plain reasoning, that a powerful monarchy was established in Iran long before the Assyrian, or Pishdadi, government: that it was in truth a Hindoo monarchy, though if any chuse to call it Cusian, Casdean, or Scythian, we shall not enter into a debate on mere names; that it subsisted many centuries, and that its history has been engrafted on that of the Ilindoos, who founded the monarchies of Uyodhya and Indru-průst'ha; that the language of the first Persian empire was the mother of the Sungskritu, and consequently of the Zend and Parsi, as well as of Greek, Latin, and Gothic; that the language of the Assyrians was the parent of Chaldaic and Pahlavi, and that the primary Tartarian language also had been current in the same empire; although, as the Tartars had no books or even letters, we cannot with certainty trace their unpolished and variable idioms. We discover, therefore, in Persia, at the earliest dawn of history, the three distinct races of men, whom we describ "A once born-man, who insults the twice-born with gross invectives, ought to have his tongue slit; for he sprang from the lowest part of Brimha: if he mention their names and classes with contumely, as if he say, Oh, dévă-dúttă, thou refuse of bramhans, an iron style, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red hot into his month. Should he, through pride, give instruction to priests concerning their duty, let the king order some hot oil to be poured into his mouth and his ear." Munoo. ed on former occasions, as possessors of India, Arabia, Tartary; and whether they were collected in Iran from distant regions, or diverged from it as from a common centre, we shall easily determine by the following considerations. Let us observe, in the first place, the central position of Iran, which is bounded by Arabia, by Tartary, and by India; whilst Arabia lies contiguous to Iran only, but is remote from Tartary, and divided even from the skirts of India by a considerable gulf; no country, therefore but Persia seems likely to have sent forth its colonies to all the kingdoms of Asia. The bramhuns could never have migrated from India to Iran, because they are expressly forbidden by their oldest existing laws to leave the region which they inhabit at this the day; Arabs have not even a tradition of an emigration into Persia before Mohammed, nor had they indeed any inducement to quit their beautiful and extensive domains; and as to the Tartars, we have no trace in history of their departure from their plains and forests till the invasion of the Medes, who, according to etymologists, were the sons of Madai; and even they were conducted by princes of an Assyrian family. The three races, therefore, whom we have already mentioned (and more than three we have not yet found) migrated from Iran as from their common country; and thus the Saxon Chronicle, I presume from good authority, brings the first inhabitants of Britain from Armenia; while a late very learned writer concludes, after all his laborious researches, that the Goths or Scythians came from Persia; and another contends with great force, that both the Irish and old Britons proceeded severally from the borders of the Caspian; a coincidence of conclusions from different media by persons wholly unconnected, which could scarce have happened if they were not grounded on solid principles. We may therefore hold this proposition firmly established, that Iran, or Persia in its largest sense, was the true centre of popula ́tions, of knowledge, of languages, and of arts; which, instead of travelling westward only, as it has been fancifully supposed, or eastward, as might with equal reason have been asserted, were expanded in all directions to all the regions of the world in which the Ilindoo race had settled under various denominations: but whether Asia has not produced other races of men, distinct from the Hindoos, the Arabs, or the Tartars, or whether any apparent diversity may not have sprung from an intermixture of those three in different proportions, must be the subject of a future inquiry." SECTION I. Of the different orders, or casts, of Hindoos. THE Hindoos are divided into four casts, viz. the Bramhun,* the Kshatriyu, the Voishyu, and the Shōodrů,§ which, however, include many other divisions and subdivisions. The samů védo, the smritees, and several pooranus, affirm, that the bramhuns proceeded from the mouth of Brůmha, the kshatriyus from his arms, the voishyŭs from his thighs, and the shoodrus from his feet; agreeably to which allegory, the Hindoos, in forming their mingled system of civil and religious polity, have assigned the priesthood, and the work of legislation, to the bramhuns; the executive department to the kshůtriyus; trade and commerce to the voishyus, and all manner of servile work to the shoodrus. Like all other attempts to cramp the human intellect, and forcibly to restrain men within bounds which nature scorns to keep, this system, however specious in theory, has operated like the Chinese national shoe, it has rendered the whole nation cripples. Under the fatal influence of this abominable system, the bramhuns have sunk into ignorance, without abating an atom of their claims to supe riority; the kshatriyus became almost extinct before their country fell into the hands of the Musulmans; the voishyus are no where to be found in Bengal; almost all have fallen into the class of shoodrus, and the shoodris have sunk to the level of their own cattle, except a few individuals whom these bramhinical fetters could not confine, and who, under a beneficent government, have successfully aspired to riches, though denied the honours to which their ingenuity and efforts would have raised them.Some pooranus maintain, in contradiction to the samă védů, that Brůmha created both a male and female; the Shree-bhagůvůtů, to confirm the perfect union of these divine books, says, that Brimha divided himself into two parts, his right side becoming a male, Swayŭmbhoovů, and the left a female, Shutu-roopa, and that these persons divided their children into bramhŭns, kshůtriyus, voishyŭs, and shoodrus. * From vrihu, to increase, or be great; or, he who knows the védŭs. + From kshee, destruction, and tru, to save; or, he who saves the oppressed. From vishu, to enter; or, he who enters on business. shudu, to take refuge, [i. e. in the bramhuns.] § From G |