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 shoōdri, 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 shōodrů 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 backof 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 shoodră 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 shoōdră 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 super : su seded a barren wife may be superseded in the eighth year; if a wife, legally perseded, 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 inhe-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,' rit ; ; ""* &c. A perusal of the other law books of the Hindoos would convince the reader, that * Sir W. Jones's translation of Mănoo. 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-tŭttwŭ, a work by Rughoo-nŭndŭnů: 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 bramhŭn, 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 bramhŭn who performs the ceremonies, who puts into his hands some ushwŭtt'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, he is supposed to be guilty; if not, he is declared innocent. In the latter case, he entertains the bramhuns, &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 kshutriyŭ 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 shastrŭ 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 Shivŭ, and offers a burnt sacrifice; 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 jŭyů-půtrů, viz. the victory-giving paper; and upon this paper writes some such words as these in Săngskrită: “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 bramhŭns, 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 66 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 bramhŭns. 7. In the tuptă-mashuku 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 cerenonies, the accused must draw bis tongue along a piece of red hot iron, eight fingers long, and four fingers broad. lf 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 dhurmujú 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 jŭyŭ-půtrů 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 East 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 Nŭdēēya. A young married woman was charged with a criminal intrigue, while her husband was absent, but denied the charge, and offered to undergo the tŭptü-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 shoodru 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 Manusinghů, a barber had made a mark on his forehead like that of a bramhun 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), Manŭsinghŭ suspected that he was not a bramhun, and on enquiry found that he was a barber. He immediately ordered his head to be struck off. + In Halhed's Code of Gentoo Laws, there is an article, commanding the magistrate to fine a man a pun of couries for killing an insect. |