To kill a

and were generally punishable with death. Brahman, to violate a Guru's bed, to drink spirituous liquors, or to steal a Brahman's gold was considered a heinous crime. If a Brahman committed one of these offences, he was branded on the forehead and banished from the country, for a Brahman could under no circumstances be executed. A man of any other caste committing one of these offences suffered death.

The same distinction pervades the laws for the punish-] ment of minor offences, and a Súdra who assaulted a higher-caste man was liable to lose the limb with which he made the assault. These unequal laws were not peculiar to India, for the conquerors and the conquered, freemen and helots, patricians and plebeians, barons and serfs, white men and slaves, never had the same laws in ancient or in modern times. It is only within the present century that nations have recognized to some extent the equality of men. No wonder, therefore, that the ancient Hindus also treated the conquered Súdras with undue severity, and that their unequal laws have found a place in their caste rules.

Thefts were visited with capital punishment when the offender was detected in the act, but the king could exercise his prerogative of mercy. The cultivator and the artizan were protected with a tender regard for their welfare, and crimes relating to a cultivator's land or to a mechanic's trade, were punished with the utmost severity.

The civil law of the period deals with rules for leasing lands for cultivation, with damages done by cattle to crops, with the rules of acquiring property and the rates of interest. Property could be acquired in eight different methods, viz., by inheritance or purchase, by gift from a husband or ordinary gift, by pledge, or as consideration for performing a sacrifice, by partnership, or as wages of

labour. The ordinary rate of interest for money lent on security was 15 per cent., and interest ceased when the principal was doubled. But where no security was given, a much higher rate of interest was charged, and the principal could be increased six or eight fold.

Such minute and detailed rules show the scrupulous care with which the prevalent customs of the age were settled and fixed. It was, however, on the law of inheritance that Hindu legists bestowed the greatest attention. The birth of a son was not only considered a blessing, but as a religious duty and as a means of salvation; for where there was no heir, there was no one to offer funeral oblations to the deceased. Thus an undue anxiety to leave heirs led the ancient Hindus to recognize various descriptions of children other than those born in wedlock.

In default of an heir being born, a child could be adopted; and if a man died without leaving such heir, either born or adopted, the widow was allowed to raise issue to the deceased. The child of a girl born before her marriage was sometimes recognized by her husband after marriage, or the son of a daughter might be accepted as its grandsire's adopted son, if he had no male issue.

Such and similar kinds of heirs were recognized by ancient Hindu lawgivers; but a reaction soon set in against these rules. A'pastamba, who is one of the latest of the Dharma Sútra writers, explains away the rules laid down by his predecessors, and declares that the son of a man by his married wife was the only description of son that could be recognized. Modern Hindus acknowledge only sons born in wedlock, or adopted sons when no heir is born.

Polygamy was allowed among the ancient Hindus, but was not encouraged. It was allowed specially to ensure male issue. "If a man," says A'pastamba, "has a wife

who is willing and able to perform her share of religious duties, and who bears sons, he shall not take a second." On the other hand, a woman was allowed to marry again if her husband was insane or impotent, or had lost his caste, or when he was dead.

At the marriage, the father decked his daughter with ornaments, and carried her to the altar. There the officiating priest helped her to offer a sacrifice to fire, and after some other rites she was united to her lord. This was the usual form of marriage, but Hindu legislators noted all other forms of union which prevailed in the times, and legalized them in their codes. A pure love marriage, in which a lover accepted a loving damsel as his wife, was recognized; and the custom, which was prevalent among the lower classes of people, of giving their girls in marriage for a consideration in cattle or money, was also legalized. Kshatriya warriors often carried away a bride after winning a battle, while Hinduized aboriginal races still won their wives by force or by stealth. It is creditable to the catholic spirit of the times that Hindu legislators noticed and recognized all these forms of marriage, although they censured them, and recommended for Aryan Hindus the purer form described above.

Marriages between kinsfolk, i.e., between men and women related within four or six degrees on the mother's or the father's side, were strictly prohibited. Hindu girls married at a proper age in the ancient times, and Vasishtha laid down the rule that maidens should wait for three years after they had attained womanhood. The cruel rite of Sati, which permitted widows to perish on the pyre of their husbands, and which came into fashion in later and more degenerate times, was not generally prevalent among the Hindus of this age. To die by the fire is an ostentatious form of suicide, which was known

in India from ancient times, and men sometimes committed suicide in this form when grief or suffering or disgrace became insupportable, and the world became cheerless; and among certain tribes of India who were not Aryan Hindus, women sometimes perished on the funeral pyre of their husbands. But this last custom was unknown to Hindus generally in ancient times, and finds no sanction in the ancient Dharma Sútras, or even in later codes of Hindu law which were composed centuries after the birth of Christ.

It may be easily imagined that the Dharma Sútras, which deal so copiously with the laws and rules of society, are not silent on the subject of caste. The expansion of Aryan Hindus over all parts of India suggested or encouraged the compilation of these manuals which were designed to keep Aryan manners pure and undefiled. The same expansion brought the Aryan Hindus in contact with various new tribes and non-Aryan races, who did not belong to the four castes which were known to them. Accordingly, we find the Sútra writers labouring to explain the origin of these races consistently with their theory of caste. That theory was elastic and comprehensive, and so new races and tribes, as they became Hinduized, began to form new castes in the hierarchy of the Hindu community.

Ambashthas, Ugras, and Nishádas, Mágadhas and Vaidehakas, Kukkutakas and Chandálas-all the swarming aboriginal races and tribes of India who came under the shadow and shelter of Hindu civilization and became Hinduized—were provided for and reckoned as separate Hindu castes. Their main occupations or habits were observed and noted, and the Dharma Sútras boldly give us a comprehensive list of castes, with the duties of each caste.

But the Sútra writers went still further. They believed

that in the beginning all mankind was divided into the original four castes, viz., Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Súdras, and they laboured to find an origin for new races whom they found all over India, and who did not belong to these castes. The strange myth was then conceived that the new aboriginal tribes were formed by inter-marriages among the parent castes. We may imagine a dogmatic Greek priest of the fifth century declaring that the Huns were descended from a Roman patrician who had married a Parthian maiden; or we may conceive a monk of the thirteenth century laying it down that the Moguls were descended from a German baron who had settled in Arabia and married a maiden of Mecca. Such wild conjectures would be believed in an ignorant age, but would be forgotten with the progress of knowledge. But in India, where the spread of knowledge became more and more restricted in course of time, the ridiculous conjecture of the priests of the Rationalistic Age has been the belief of ages!

The Dharma Sútras of the age thus derive an Ambashtha from a Brahman and a Vaisya female, an Ugra from a Kshatriya and a Sudra woman, a Nisháda from a Brahman and a Sudra woman, a Mágadha from a Sudra and a Vaisya woman, a Chandála from a Sudra and a Brahman woman, and so on! Those who know anything of the millions of Chandálas in Bengal, know well enough that they are an industrious aboriginal tribe, proficient in fishing, boating, and agriculture, and who have become Hinduized as they have come under the influence of Hindu civilization. It is thus that the race castes of India have been formed, each aboriginal race forming a caste of its own as it came within the pale of the Hindu world.

It is important to note, however, that the numerous profession castes of modern India were not yet formed