hare, let him double to secure his retreat."
Some of this philosophy was rigorously acted
out in the recent mutiny.

The subject of judicature is divided into
eighteen sections, which treat of almost every
conceivable offence at more or less length.
It is only possible to extract one or two cases
by way of specimen:

Generally, punishments are light for Brahmans:
much more severe in the other
classes. A merchant may be fined two hundred
panas for slandering a priest; but a
priest, for slandering a merchant, only
twenty-five. A once-born man who insults
a twice-born with gross invectives ought to
have his tongue slit: should he spit on him
through pride, both his lips shall be gashed.
A woman who disregards the marriage
bond is condemned to be devoured by dogs in
a frequented place; and the adulterer shall
be slowly consumed by fire upon an iron bed.
Every damsel shall be given in marriage
by her father to an excellent and handsome
youth of her own class. If, however, she is
retained at home three years after being
marriageable, she may choose her own bridegroom.
A man of thirty may marry a girl
of twelve, or a man of twenty-four one of
eight. Never shall a father sell his daughter
or receive any nuptial gratuity: she must
be given freely. In general, a widow must
not marry again; but, if her husband dies
without issue, it is proper that she should
beget a son to maintain his name and
honour.

Gaming with dice and the like, or in
matches between cocks and rams, is sternly
prohibited. It is as culpable as open theft.
Gamesters, receivers of bribes, fortune-tellers,
and professors of palmistry, elephant breakers
and quacks, pretended artists and subtle
harlots, and all who act ill in secret; these,
and the like thorny weeds, overspreading the
world, let the king discover with a quick
sight. The seller of bad grain for good, or
of good seed placed at the top of the bag to
conceal the bad below, and the destroyer of
known landmarks, must suffer such corporal
punishment as will disfigure them. But the
most pernicious of all deceivers is the goldsmith
who commits frauds; the king shall
order him to be cut piecemeal with razors.

The remaining two of the four great classes
of Hindoo society are disposed of in a few
verses:

The Vaisya must be always attentive to
business: he must know the prices of gems,
pearls, and corals, of iron and cloth, of perfumes
and liquids: he must be skilled in the
time and manner of sowing seeds, and in the
bad and good qualities of land; he must know
the just wages of servants, the various dialects
of men, the best way of keeping goods,
and whatever else relates to purchase and
sale.

As to the Sudra, servile attendance on
Brahmans is his highest duty, and leads him
to future beatitude. Pure in body and mind,
humbly serving the three superior classes,
"mild in speech," never arrogant, he may
attain the most eminent class in another
transmigration.

Besides the four pure classes, there are
enumerated thirty-six other impure classes,
the result of intermarriages. All these tribes
must live apart; near large public trees, or in
graveyards, on mountains or in groves, where
they may be either avoided or sought, and
where they may perform the various vile
duties which are allotted to them. Some
act as carriers, fishermen, carpenters, others
as doctors, or musicians: professional gentlemen
being thus placed very low on the
step of the social ladder. The abodes of a
Chandala and a Sopaca, the basest of the
base, must be out of the town. Their sole
wealth must be dogs and asses; their clothes
must be the mantles of the dead; their dishes
for food, broken pots; their ornaments, rusty
iron. No man may hold intercourse with
them: food must be given them in potsherds,
but not by the giver's hands. Their duty is
to bury all who die without kindred, and to
kill all condemned to death.

The last chapter is devoted to the exposition
of Transmigration and Beatitude. The
rule of retribution is this: "Action, whether
mental, verbal, or corporeal, bears good or
evil fruit as itself is good or evil." For
corporeal acts which are sinful, a man shall
assume after death a vegetable or mineral
form; for verbal acts, the form of a bird or
beast; for mental acts, the lower of human
conditions.

The three qualities of the rational soul are
a tendency to goodness, to passion, and to
darkness. Goodness is true knowledge;
darkness is gross ignorance; passion is
intermediate, including emotions of desire and
aversion. The quality of darkness brings
nothing but shame, its only object being base
pleasure; the quality of passion, having for
its object worldly prosperity, leads to temporal
exaltation and celebrity; but the
quality of goodness, making virtue its object,
produces divine knowledge and placid joy
both here and hereafter. For deeds of darkness,
men shall be born cats, flies, maggots,
and worms. The bodies of actors and wrestlers,
of kings and controversialists (alas for
the critical world!), of genii and nymphs, shall
receive those in whom passion predominates.
The spirits of the truly good shall pass into
hermits, sages, regents of stars, into Brahma
himself.

Happiness is to be attained by sacrifice:
but selfish sacrifice— that which is meant to
purchase present or future joy— is much inferior
to disinterested sacrifice. The holiest sacrifice,
superior to all ceremonial rites, is made
by that man who, equally perceiving the
supreme soul in all beings and all beings in
the supreme soul, sacrifices his own spirit by
fixing it on the Spirit of God, and approaches