The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones


The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:08 am

Institutes of Hindu Law: Or, The Ordinances of Menu, According to the Gloss of Culluca. Comprising the Indian System of Duties, Religious and Civil
Verbally translated from the original Sanscrit, With a Preface, by Sir William Jones



The Manusmṛiti ... was one of the first Sanskrit texts to have been translated into English in 1776, by Sir William Jones, and was used to formulate the Hindu law by the British colonial government...

Over fifty manuscripts of the Manusmriti are now known, but the earliest discovered, most translated and presumed authentic version since the 18th century has been the "Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) manuscript with Kulluka Bhatta commentary". Modern scholarship states this presumed authenticity is false, and the various manuscripts of Manusmriti discovered in India are inconsistent with each other, and within themselves, raising concerns of its authenticity, insertions and interpolations made into the text in later times...

The title Manusmriti is a relatively modern term and a late innovation, probably coined because the text is in a verse form...

[T]he text version in modern use, according to Olivelle, is likely the work of a single author or a chairman with research assistants.

Manusmriti, Olivelle states, was not a new document, it drew on other texts, and it reflects "a crystallization of an accumulated knowledge" in ancient India....

The text is composed in metric Shlokas (verses), in the form of a dialogue between an exalted teacher and disciples who are eager to learn about the various aspects of dharma....

The verses 12.1, 12.2 and 12.82 are transitional verses. This section is in a different style than the rest of the text, raising questions whether this entire chapter was added later. While there is evidence that this chapter was extensively redacted over time, however it is unclear whether the entire chapter is of a later era....

The structure and contents of the Manusmriti suggest it to be a document predominantly targeted at the Brahmins (priestly class) and the Kshatriyas (king, administration and warrior class). The text dedicates 1,034 verses, the largest portion, on laws for and expected virtues of Brahmins, and 971 verses for Kshatriyas...

Chapter 7 of the Manusmriti discusses the duties of a king, what virtues he must have, what vices he must avoid. In verses 7.54 - 7.76, the text identifies precepts to be followed in selecting ministers, ambassadors and officials, as well as the characteristics of well fortified capital. Manusmriti then lays out the laws of just war, stating that first and foremost, war should be avoided by negotiations and reconciliations. If war becomes necessary, states Manusmriti, a soldier must never harm civilians, non-combatants or someone who has surrendered, that use of force should be proportionate, and other rules. Fair taxation guidelines are described in verses 7.127 to 7.137...

Sinha, for example, states that less than half, or only 1,214 of the 2,685 verses in Manusmriti, may be authentic. Further, the verses are internally inconsistent. Verses such as 3.55-3.62 of Manusmriti, for example, glorify the position of women, while verse such as 9.3 and 9.17 do the opposite. Other passages found in Manusmriti, such as those relating to Ganesha, are modern era insertions and forgeries...

There are so many contradictions in the printed volume that, if you accept one part, you are bound to reject those parts that are wholly inconsistent with it. (...) Nobody is in possession of the original text...

Scholars doubt Manusmriti was ever administered as law text in ancient or medieval Hindu society. David Buxbaum states, "in the opinion of the best contemporary orientalists, it [Manusmriti] does not, as a whole, represent a set of rules ever actually administered in Hindustan. It is in great part an ideal picture of that which ... ought to be law".

Donald Davis writes, "there is no historical evidence for either an active propagation or implementation of Dharmasastra [Manusmriti] by a ruler or any state – as distinct from other forms of recognizing, respecting and using the text. Thinking of Dharmasastra as a legal code and of its authors as lawgivers is thus a serious misunderstanding of its history"....

Prior to the British colonial rule, Sharia (Islamic law) for Muslims in South Asia had been codified as Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, but laws for non-Muslims –- such as Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis –- were not codified during the 600 years of Islamic rule...

In the 18th century, the earliest British of the East India Company acted as agents of the Mughal emperor... The administration ... relying upon co-opted local intermediaries that were mostly Muslims and some Hindus in various princely states... exercised power by ... adapting to law practices as explained by the local intermediaries. The existing legal texts for Muslims, and resurrected Manusmriti manuscript thus helped the colonial state ...

For Muslims of India, the British accepted sharia as the legal code for Muslims, based on texts such the al-Sirjjiyah and Fatawa-i Alamgiri written under sponsorship of Aurangzeb. For Hindus and other non-Muslims such as Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Tribal people, this information was unavailable. The substance of Hindu law, was derived by the British colonial officials from Manusmriti...

Manusmriti ... was not in use for centuries during the Islamic rule period of India. The officials resurrected Manusmriti, constructed statements of positive law from the text for non-Muslims, in order to remain faithful to its policy of using sharia for the South Asian Muslim population. Manusmriti, thus played a role in constructing the Anglo-Hindu law, as well as Western perceptions about ancient and medieval era Hindu culture from the colonial times. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im states the significance and role of Manusmriti in governing India during the colonial era as follows (abridged),

The [British] colonial administration began the codification of Hindu and Muslim laws in 1772 and continued through the next century, with emphasis on certain texts as the authentic "sources" of the law and custom of Hindus and Muslims, which in fact devalued and retarded those dynamic social systems. The codification of complex and interdependent traditional systems froze certain aspects of the status of women, for instance, outside the context of constantly evolving social and economic relations, which in effect limited or restricted women's rights. The selectivity of the process, whereby colonial authorities sought the assistance of Hindu and Muslim religious elites in understanding the law, resulted in the Brahminization and Islamization of customary laws [in British India]. For example, the British orientalist scholar William Jones translated the key texts Al Sirjjiyah in 1792 as the Mohammedan Law of Inheritance, and Manusmriti in 1794 as the Institutes of Hindu Law or the Ordinances of Manu. In short, British colonial administrators reduced centuries of vigorous development of total ethical, religious and social systems to fit their own preconceived European notions of what Muslim and Hindu "law" should be...

Along with Manusmriti (Manava Dharmasastra), ancient India had between eighteen and thirty six competing Dharma-sastras, states John Bowker. Many of these texts have been lost completely or in parts.

-- Manusmriti, by Wikipedia

6 With unanointed eyes and limbs, wearing no gem or ring of gold.
No priest, no Brāhman's son is he: these things are ordered in the rules.
7 With well-anointed limbs and eyes, wearing fair gem and golden ring,
Good priest is he, the Brāhman's son; these things are ordered in the rules.
8 Pools with no place for drinking, and the wealthy man who giveth naught,
The pretty girl you may not touch, these things are ordered in the rules.
9 Pools with good drinking places, and the wealthy man who freely gives,
The pretty girl who may be touched, these things are ordered in the rules.
10 The favourite wife neglected, and the man who safely shuns the fight,
A sluggish horse whom none may guide, these things are ordered in the rules.
11 The favourite wife most dearly loved, the man who safely goes to war,
The fleet steed who obeys the rein, these things are ordered in the rules.

-- The Hymns of the Atharvaveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith

Contents: [PDF HERE]

• The Preface.
• The Laws of Menu, Son of Brahma.
• Chapter the First. On the Creation; With a Summary of the Contents.
• Chapter the Second. On Education; or on the Sacerdotal Class, and The First Order.
• Chapter the Third. On Marriage; or on the Second Order.
• Chapter the Fourth. On Economicks; and Private Morals.
• Chapter the Fifth. On Diet, Purification, and Women.
• Chapter the Sixth. On Devotion; or on the Third and Fourth Orders.
• Chapter the Seventh. On Government, and Publick Law; or on the Military Class.
• Chapter the Eighth. On Judicature; and on Law, Private and Criminal.
• Chapter the Ninth. On the same; and on the Commercial and Servile Classes.
• Chapter the Tenth. On the mixed Classes; and on Times of Distress.
• Chapter the Eleventh. On Penance and Expiation.
• Chapter the Twelfth. On Transmigration and Final Beatitude.
• General Note.
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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Wed Jul 21, 2021 8:08 am

Part 1 of 2


It is a maxim in the science of legislation and government, that Laws are of no avail without manners, or, to explain the sentence more fully, that the best intended legislative provisions would have no beneficial effect even at first, and none at all in a short course of time, unless they were congenial to the disposition and habits, to the religious prejudices, and approved immemorial usages of the people for whom they were enabled; especially if that people universally and sincerely believed, that all their ancient usages and established rules of conduct had the sanction of an actual revelation from heaven: the legislature of Britain having shown, in compliance with this maxim, an intention to leave the natives of these Indian provinces in possession of their own Laws, at least on the titles of contracts and inheritances, we may humbly presume, that all future provisions, for the administration of justice and government in India, will be conformable, as far as the natives are affected by them, to the manners and opinions of the natives themselves; an object which cannot possibly be attained, until those manners and opinions can be fully and accurately known. These considerations, and a few others more immediately within my province, were my principal motives for wishing to know, and have induced me at length to publish, that system of duties, religious and civil, and of law in all its branches, which the Hindus firmly believe to have been promulged in the beginning of time by Menu, son or grandson of Brahma, or, in plain language, the first of created beings, and not the oldest only, but the holiest of legislators; a system so comprehensive and so minutely exact, that it may be considered as the Institutes of Hindu Law, preparatory to the copious Digest, which has lately been compiled by Pandits of eminent learning, and introductory perhaps to a Code which may supply the many natural defects in the old jurisprudence of this country, and, without any deviation from its principles, accommodate it justly to the improvements of a commercial age.

We are lost in an inextricable labyrinth of imaginary astronomical cycles, Yugas, Mahayugas, Calpas, and Menwantaras, in attempting to calculate the time, when the first Menu, according to the Brahmens, governed this world, and became the progenitor of mankind
, who from him are called Manavah; nor can we, so clouded are the old history and chronology of India with fables and allegories, ascertain the precise age, when the work, now presented to the Publick, was actually composed; but we are in possession of some evidence, partly extrinsick and partly internal, that it is really one of the oldest compositions existing. From a text of Parasara discovered by Mr. Davis, it appears, that the vernal equinox had gone back from the tenth degree of Bharani to the first of Aswini, or twenty-three degrees and twenty minutes, between the days of that Indian philosopher, and the year of our Lord 499, when it coincided with the origin of the Hindu ecliptick; so that Parasara probably flourished near the close of the twelfth century before Christ; now Parasara was the grandson of another sage, named Vasishtha, who is often mentioned in the laws of Menu, and once as contemporary with the divine Bhrigu himself; but the character of Bhrigu, and the whole dramatical arrangement of the book before us, are clearly fictitious and ornamental, with a design, too common among ancient lawgivers, of stamping authority on the work by the introduction of supernatural personages, though Vasishtha may have lived many generations before the actual writer of it, who names him, indeed, in one or two places as a philosopher in an earlier period. The style, however, and metre of this work (which there is not the smallest reason to think affectedly obsolete) are widely different from the language and metrical rules of Calida's, who unquestionably wrote before the beginning of our era; and the dialect of Menu is even observed, in many passages, to resemble that of the Veda, particularly in a departure from the more modern grammatical forms; whence it must, at first view, seem very probable, that the laws, now brought to light, were considerably older than those of Solon or even of Lycurgus, although the promulgation of them, before they were reduced to writing, might have been coeval with the first monarchies established in Egypt or Asia:


Vasishtha is one of the oldest and most revered Vedic rishis or sages. He is one of the Saptarishis (seven great Rishis) of India. Vashistha is credited as the chief author of Mandala 7 of the Rigveda. Vashishtha and his family are mentioned in Rigvedic verse 10.167.4, other Rigvedic mandalas and in many Vedic texts. His ideas have been influential and he was called the first sage of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy by Adi Shankara.

The Yoga Vashishtha, Vashishtha Samhita, as well as some versions of the Agni Purana and Vishnu Purana are attributed to him. He is the subject of many stories, such as him being in possession of the divine cow Kamadhenu and Nandini her child, who could grant anything to their owners. He is famous in Hindu stories for his legendary conflicts with sage Vishvamitra. In the Ramayana, he was the family priest of the Raghu dynasty and teacher of Lord Rama and his brothers.

-- Vasishtha, by Wikipedia

Shakti Maharishi was son of Vaśiṣṭha and Arundhati. He was the father of Parāśara mentioned in the Mahabharata.

There is a famous story found in Mahabharata about Shakti Muni. Once King Kalmashapada, going hunting, kills many animals. Tiring and being hungry and thirsty, he proceeded through the woods. On the way, Rishi Shakti Maharishi came on the same path, from the opposite direction. The King ordered him to get out of his way. The Rishi addressed the King sweetly and said "O king this is my way". In accordance with duty and tradition, a king should always make way for Brahmins. The king persisted in acting like a Rakshasa (demon). The Rishi cursed the king thus: "O worst of the worst kings, since thou persecutest an ascetic, like a Rakshasa, thou shalt from this day, became a Rakshasa subsisting on human flesh! Henceforth, O worst of kings! thou shalt wander over the earth, affecting human form!" He was the grandfather of Vyasa, author of the Indian epic Mahabharata.

-- Shakti (sage), by Wikipedia

There are several texts which give reference to Parashara as an author/speaker. Modern scholars believe that there were many individuals who used this name throughout time whereas others assert that the same Parashara taught these various texts and the time of writing them varied. The actual sage himself never wrote the texts; the various texts attributed to him are given in reference to Parashara being the speaker to his student.

-- Parashara, by Wikipedia

but, having had the singular good fortune to procure ancient copies of eleven Upanishads, with a very perspicuous comment, I am enabled to fix, with more exactness, the probable age of the work before us, and even to limit its highest possible age by a mode of reasoning, which may be thought new, but will be found, I persuade myself, satisfactory; if the Publick shall, on this occasion, give me credit for a few very curious facts, which, though capable of strict proof, can at present be only asserted.
Now the age of Vicramaditya is given; and if we can fix on an Indian prince contemporary with Seleucus, we shall have three given points in the line of time between Rama, or the first Indian colony, and Chandrabija, the last Hindu monarch who reigned in Bahar; so that only eight hundred or a thousand years will remain almost wholly dark; and they must have been employed in raising empires or states, in framing laws, improving languages and arts, and in observing the apparent motions of the celestial bodies. A Sanscrit [Sanskrit] history of the celebrated Vicramaditya was inspected at Benares by a Pandit, who would not have deceived me, and could not himself have been deceived; but the owner of the book is dead, and his family dispersed; nor have my friends in that city been able, with all their exertions, to procure a copy of it. ...

I cannot help mentioning a discovery which accident threw in my way, though my proofs must be reserved for an essay which I have destined for the fourth volume of your Transactions. To fix the situation of that Palibothra (for there may have been several of the name) which was visited and described by Megasthenes, had always appeared a very difficult problem, for though it could not have been Prayaga, where no ancient metropolis ever stood, nor Canyacubja, which has no epithet at all resembling the word used by the Greeks; nor Gaur, otherwise called Lacshmanavati, which all know to be a town comparatively modern, yet we could not confidently decide that it was Pataliputra, though names and most circumstances nearly correspond, because that renowned capital extended from the confluence of the Sone and the Ganges to the site of Patna, while Palibothra stood at the junction of the Ganges and Erannoboas, which the accurate M. D'Anville had pronounced to be the Yamuna; but this only difficulty was removed, when I found in a classical Sanscrit book, near 2000 years old, that Hiranyabahu, or golden armed, which the Greeks changed into Erannoboas, or the river with a lovely murmur, was in fact another name for the Sona itself; though Megasthenes, from ignorance or inattention, has named them separately. This discovery led to another of greater moment, for Chandragupta, who, from a military adventurer, became like Sandracottus the sovereign of Upper Hindustan, actually fixed the seat of his empire at Pataliputra, where he received ambassadors from foreign princes; and was no other than that very Sandracottus who concluded a treaty with Seleucus Nicator; so that we have solved another problem, to which we before alluded, and may in round numbers consider the twelve and three hundredth years before Christ, as two certain epochs between Rama, who conquered Silan a few centuries after the flood, and Vicramaditya, who died at Ujjayini fifty-seven years before the beginning of our era.

Since these discussions would lead us too far, I proceed to the History of Nature...

But I should be led beyond the limits assigned to me on this occasion, if I were to expatiate farther on the historical division of the knowledge comprised in the literature of Asia; and I must postpone till next year my remarks on Asiatic Philosophy, and on those arts which depend on imagination; promising you with confidence, that in the course of the present year, your inquiries into the civil and natural history of this eastern world will be greatly promoted by the learned labours of many among our associates and correspondents.

-- Discourse X. Delivered February 28, 1793, P. 192, Excerpt from "Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers, on The Religion, Poetry, Literature, Etc. of the Nations of India", by Sir William Jones

The Sanscrit of the three first Vedas, (I need not here speak of the fourth) that of the Manava Dherma Sastra, and that of the Paranas, differ from each other in pretty exact proportion to the Latin of Numa, from whose laws entire sentences are preserved, that of Appius, which we see in the fragments of the Twelve Tables, and that of Cicero, or of Lucretius, where he has not affected an obsolete style:

It is to the nature of the early history of the city of Rome that I now ask your attention.

It is a mere commonplace to remark that the earliest stages in the history of most peoples present very great difficulties in the way of arriving at anything like the exact facts, and this is usually due to the insufficiency of evidence that has come down to us, and to the inevitable errors resulting from the nature of tradition. In the case of the early history of the greatest city in the world, the difficulty is immeasurably increased by the well-known fact, that in addition to all the errors inherent we have to do with a considerable amount of material which is known to be the product of the deliberate invention of later times. So while the problem becomes exceedingly perplexing, the eagerness of scholars to solve it, becomes correspondingly keen. Nor can it be said that time and labor expended on its solution are wasted, so long as any hope remains of arriving at something like the real facts.

There are certain peculiar features in the case of Roman history, the most noticeable of which is the character of Roman literature, on which we must depend so much for our information. Here is no developing native product, but a literature due to foreign impulse, and worked out in conscious imitation of Greek models, both as regards form and substance. The earliest annalists of Rome intentionally followed their patterns, and the elimination of the Greek from the native is one of the most difficult parts of the problem. Most noticeable again in its effect upon the tradition of Roman history, was the servile attitude maintained towards Rome by the rest of the world after the Punic wars, which resulted in a deliberate falsification of everything in favor of the dominant power. With a very few apparent exceptions like Metrodorus of Skepsis, almost all historiographers of that period took part in the general chorus of adulation, entirely regardless of the truth. A third peculiarity of the situation is the presence of what was really an official or "canonical" tradition. The methods employed by the Greek and Roman manufacturers of early history, had resulted in the promulgation of numerous narratives of the same events, so contradictory as to disturb even the Romans themselves, and to bring about the formation of a sort of official version which became in a sense "canonical," and was generally accepted by the principal writers of the post-Ciceronian age. This is the account that Livy, for instance, usually presents, although all our historians do not hesitate to give very frequently other versions along with the "canonical." These conditions were recognized by the Roman historians themselves, but with hardly an exception, they failed entirely to develop what we call the critical method. Beyond a certain point this could not have been expected, but it is a source of surprise and disappointment that we have to wait until the close of the first century to find a Roman Thucydides.

The legacy of Rome, then, to the world, so far as her own early history is concerned, is a mass of fable, fact and fancy, inextricably interwoven, and commended to us by all the charm of Livian rhetoric, and this inheritance has been accepted and enjoyed without question or cavil, by the vast majority even of scholars until very recent times...

So in the matter under discussion, we have passed through the stage where all that has come down to us about the regal period was ruthlessly cast aside as absolutely false, the succeeding stage when men were inclined to see much that was true beneath the overlying strata of legend, then a stage when, in some quarters at least, an almost medieval attitude of belief was assumed, and now finally a period when even the first condition of skepticism seems to be well-nigh surpassed. There is, if we may so speak, a very renaissance of unbelief with regard to the first three centuries of Rome's existence... But as the latest voice of Ciceronian criticism has tended to rehabilitate the great orator, the latest voice of historical criticism, uttered too by a descendant of the Romans themselves, is the most powerful yet heard in the attack upon all that tradition has handed down concerning the early history of Rome.

I refer of course to Ettore Pais and his great work La Storia di Roma, in the first two volumes of which he has discussed the history of Rome down to the time of Pyrrhus, and while following out the lines laid down by Mommsen in the Roemische Forschungen has gone far beyond that great man in the scope of his work, comprehensiveness of treatment and importance of results...

Before proceeding to the discussion of the results of this latest investigation of the sources of our knowledge of early Roman history, our attention should be fixed upon a factor in the problem, not new by any means, but which has recently assumed much larger proportions than formerly, that is the control exercised over results obtained in other ways by archaeological and topographical discoveries. The increased importance of material of this kind finds an excellent illustration in the information which has come into our hands as a result of the systematic excavations carried on in the Forum and Comitium during the past two years and a half. It was to be expected that in the archaeological remains of these two spots -- one the center of Roman political life, the other the center of all else -- much would be found to help in tracing the course of development of the city itself, as it was marked in monuments of brick and stone, monuments which could hardly be falsified by succeeding generations....

As a matter of fact, the discoveries made within a space twenty feet square at the edge of the Comitium have precipitated a violent struggle between those who accept the traditional account of the regal period and those who do not, and the final settlement of the questions raised by these discoveries may go a long way in determining our attitude toward that tradition. To be sure the problem suggested here is not purely topographical but involves other elements as well, and the point may be better illustrated in a very simple case by noting that topographical conditions prove at once that Livy's account of the settlement of many thousand Latins in the valley ad Murciae in the days of Ancus Martius, must be absolutely wrong.

In view of the certain additions which have been and will continue to be made to our knowledge of the material remains of ancient Rome, and the publication of so notable a book as that of Pais, no apology is necessary for directing our attention again to the credibility of early Roman history, and we can perhaps do no better than follow our new leader in a brief review of the character of some of the sources from which information as to the events of the early period is derived, and of some of these events themselves.

At the very outset one must note the strange contrast that exists between the remarkable amount of detailed information given us by the annalists and the comparatively late period at which they did their work. There is a still greater contrast between this elaborate history and that of other peoples at the same relative stage of development, like the peoples of the east and of the Greek cities. If we know so little of the history of Magna Graecia before the fourth century, how is it that we know so much about Rome in the eighth and seventh?...

The Annales Maximi were according to Cato's statement a list of magistrates, prodigies, eclipses and the price of corn. But these meager lists cannot have made up those eighty rolls which Cicero describes and which contained the history of the city from the beginning down to 133 B.C., and which were diffuse enough to contain Piso's story of Romulus's use of wine. These Annales were written out long after the beginning of Latin literature, and owed their form and much of their content to the annals of the Greeks. In Pais's words, "The little that we know of them reveals such a direct imitation of the Greek writers, such abundance of words, or as we might better say, such garrulity, as suited the chatter of barbers [quelle ciancie di barbieri] which Polybius censures in Sosilus and Chaerea, the historians of Hannibal, but which did not suit in any way the redaction of state documents, compiled at a tolerably early date." No fragment of the Annales Maximi in our possession belongs to a redaction earlier than the third century. In short, after Pais's keen critique, it is difficult to see in them anything but a second century creation, based on the tradition of the great Roman families, the works of early Greek historiographers, and the earliest Roman poets like Ennius, and we must recognize the fact that "these fragments which have come down to us have nothing to do with the most ancient pontifical tablets which were little more than an illustration of the calendar."

The influence of Ennius, Naevius and other early Roman poets, if such there were, in shaping the legendary history of the early period, has probably been greatly underestimated. It can be shown further, that these poets drew their material for early times, as well as their inspiration from their Greek predecessors and contemporaries. It would be idle to discuss at length the characteristics of these Greeks who approached their subject with no intention or desire to learn the truth, but only to produce a skilfully constructed poem into which could be woven a vast mass of legend and myth, with the natural result that the product was characterized by pure imagination, duplication, and falsification. This compilation of the Annales Maximi during the second century, under the influence of the first Roman poets and annalists, gave rise to the formation of what is known as the "canonical" tradition of the origin and early history of the city, and this "canonical" form which was an attempt to correlate divergent accounts, seems to have been put into final shape by Varro in his systematization and arrangement of all existing knowledge.

Our own chief literary sources of information are three, Diodorus Siculus, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The two latter give in general the accepted official version, while Diodorus is apt to present divergent accounts, and is usually credited with a greater degree of independent judgment. Nevertheless, the evidence of all three has practically no first hand value. The stream cannot rise higher than its source.

Interesting illustrations of the way in which this early history was manufactured, abound on every hand...

Furthermore, as the Romans themselves tell us, all their historians down to the time of Pompey belonged to distinguished families by relationship or clientage, and this very fact caused them to be at pains to exalt the history of their own clans, a fruitful source of fabrication. But there was another influence at work, and that was the desire to exalt the whole state, and its history. Hence the determined effort to give official sanction to the tradition that the Romans came of Trojan or Hellenic stock, and that they could trace their origin to a time as early as any of the Greek cities.

Two other factors in the formation of this artificial structure, the received story of the early days, were the duplication of events actual or alleged, and the influence of current political tendencies and theories. The duplication of events, that is the assigning of what happened at one time to another much earlier date, in either the same or a slightly disguised form, while not peculiar to Roman history, has there found its widest application. It is not among the least of Pais's services that he has brought out with proper emphasis the great importance of this factor. So numerous are the examples, such as the repeated stories of Manlius, and the explanations of the Lacus Curtius, that it would be useless to linger over them. The reasons for such duplication are patent at the first glance, among them the stereotyped character and conduct of those who belonged to the same house, the desire of succeeding generations to imitate the deeds of their ancestors, and the fact that so many of the clans seem to have assumed in successive years the command against the same foes. Variations in later versions seem usually to have been intentionally made, in order that suspicion might be averted. Consulships, dictatorships and censorships were boldly attributed to the ancestors of those who had held these offices in historical times, and so notorious was the practice that even Cicero and Livy protested against it. In consequence of this same impulse, events of a later date were thrown back into earlier periods, as the fabled treaty of 508 B.C. between Rome and Carthage, and the establishment of the censorship in the days of Servius Tullius. The same tendency which has assigned to Charlemagne the achievements of more than one man produced such types as Appius Claudius and Coriolanus.

The last factor in the fabrication of Roman history upon which much weight must be laid, is that of the political attitude of the historian and his hero. Cato, as is well known, tried to do something to counteract this evil, by refusing to mention the names of those of whom he was writing, but nothing could have been farther from the purpose of all other Roman historians. One has only to read Livy's account of perfectly historical persons and events, to see how he deliberately warped or suppressed the truth in order to depreciate the services of those who represented opposite political views. Modern colorless critical history was something entirely unsupposable to the Roman mind. Education in morals and good citizenship, the avowed object of the Roman historian, demanded an expression on his part of what he considered right and patriotic, and a condemnation of the opposite. To the most critical and truth-seeking of Romans, even a writer like Froude would have seemed not only culpably impartial but absolutely impossible.

These elements have been recognized in some degree by all historians since Niebuhr, but the extent of their application has varied. We have in general come to regard the history of the regal period as legendary so far as details are concerned, but no such view has prevailed with regard to the republic. It is true that Mommsen in his Roemische Forschungen laid down the lines along which the investigation should proceed, and in his essays on Coriolanus, Spurius Maelius, Spurius Cassius and Marcus Manlius, demonstrated the non-historical character of many of the tales from the period of the early republic, but in these particular cases, the subjects were such as would most naturally be derived from mythical sources. Neither in his history nor in his essays, does Mommsen cast any serious doubt upon the truth of the main features of the traditional history of the period between the expulsion of the Kings and the fall of the decemvirate. The attitude of most scholars previous to 1898, may be illustrated by that of Pelham and Shuckburgh in their histories published in 1893 and 1894. Pelham, after explaining the reasons why the history of the early republic is subject to some extent to the same suspicions as that of the regal period, and stating that the "details are of no historical value," proceeds to relate the course of events in such a way as not to suggest for a moment that he discredits the main features of the narrative. Shuckburgh is much less skeptical and gives his readers to understand that he is treating of what is genuinely historical.

Hardened as we have become to the process of having long cherished beliefs destroyed, and prone as we are to welcome innovations in all things, we cannot overcome a sense of dismay at reading statements like these of Pais:
"We arrive therefore at the conclusion that the whole account of decemvirate, that is the creation of this magistracy, the sending of the embassy to Athens, the codification of the laws of the Twelve Tables, the circumstances and procedure with reference to Virginia, no less than the second secession of the plebs, the following passage of the Canuleian laws, and the revolution at Ardea, are the results of unskilful attempts to combine self-contradictory traditions, and have at bottom no historical or chronological value." ...

"In the case of all the history of Roman legislation before the decemvirate we are confronted with accounts not originally true and only altered by later changes, but produced by real and deliberate falsification.

"The pretended constitutional history of Rome, described by the annalists of the second and first centuries, is in direct opposition to the honest and sincere declaration of Polybius who asserted that it was difficult to explain the beginnings and successive modifications, and to foretell the future phases of the Roman constitution, since the institutions of the past, both private and public, were unknown."...

This means that everything which has been handed down from the years before 440 B.C. is thoroughly discredited, and that the beginning of anything like genuine history must be placed after that date...

let us look rather at the latter and examine briefly two or three of the main features in the narrative which has come down to us. Perhaps the most noteworthy event in the twenty years after the expulsion of the Kings, was the secession of the plebs to the Sacred Mount, which marked the culmination of the first stage in the struggle between plebeian and patrician, and resulted in the establishment of that most unique of Roman institutions, the tribuneship. The circumstances are familiar to all, how in the midst of wars with Aequians and Volscians, the plebs were put off again and again with false promises, until after the army had won a victory under the dictator Manius Valerius, and was encamped before the city, the Senate still refused to adopt the necessary reforms. Thereupon the army, by which we must suppose the plebeian part of it to be meant, marched in order to the Sacred Mount, or according to another version to the Aventine, and returned to the city only after their claims had been allowed, in part at least, and the tribuneship established. Half a century later, another secession is described. The decemvirs had refused to give up office, and had, it was alleged, caused Lucius Siccius Denitatus, a veteran of many campaigns, to be foully murdered, while the most notorious of the board, Appius Claudius, had by his attempt to carry off Virginia, forced her father to slay her in defense of honor. The army again marched to the Sacred Mount, nominated tribunes, advanced to Rome and occupied the Aventine. A compromise was negotiated by Valerius and Horatius, and the tribunate again established.

Now the very similarity of these two accounts is enough to arouse grave suspicion, and an investigation of all the attendant circumstances proves that the first secession is but an anticipation of the second, together with some features which repeat the story of the expulsion of the Kings. Thus of the two leaders in the secession, Lucius Junius Brutus and Caius Sicinius, the latter is but the duplication of C. Sicinius, one of the tribunes elected after the fall of the decemvirate, and both these again of that Sicinius who was tribune in 395 B.C., and after the taking of Veii proposed to emigrate thither from Rome and found a new state. The names of the tribunes, either when the establishment of the tribunate in 494 is spoken of, or the increase in their number in 471, or the reestablishment of the institution in 449, show by their identity or similarity, that they represent only repetitions and variations of the same tradition, and that the successive Sicinii or Siccii -- for these appear to be variants of the same name -- Icilii, etc., are due to this process of duplication. So Manius Valerius who pacified the plebs in 494 before the first secession, is the same person, and the occasion the same, that we find described in Livy,1 [VII. 39.] where he tells how in 342 the dictator M. Valerius Corvus checked the rage of the army by his eloquence, and again of the same occurrence in 302 or 300. In this latter year, moreover, this same Valerius, when Consul, caused the famous "lex de provocatione" to be again approved, which had been already passed twice in previous years, and always on the motion of members of this same family. That is, during the first two hundred years of the republic, the passage of the same measure was attributed to the efforts of the same family thrice, which means, of course, that the annalists who wrote under the inspiration of the Valerii, thrust this action of theirs further and further back....

To sum up in the words of Professor Pais:
"The story of the decemvirate . . . which we have seen to be false on its external side is no more authentic with regard to its essential or internal character, and the natural consequence is that the whole account is to be rejected in its entirety as a later invention.

"The pseudo-history from the expulsion of the Kings to the fall of the decemvirs and the conspiracy of Spurius Maelius, consists of two or three parts which are repeated. To the Sabine invasions and the continual wars with Volscians and Aequians, correspond the popular agitations which led to the secessions of 494 and 450, and the creation of tribunes in 493, 471 and 449. All these varying acts in the drama are the result of the simple duplication of the same event."

For the period after the decemvirate and down to the sack of Rome by the Gauls, this rigid criticism discloses a similar chaotic condition of tradition, and it is only gradually, even in this fourth century, that we begin to find trustworthy and accurate historical data.

-- The Credibility of Early Roman History, by Samuel Ball Platner
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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Wed Jul 21, 2021 8:15 am

Part 2 of 2

... if the several changes, therefore, of Sanscrit and Latin took place, as we may fairly assume, in times very nearly proportional, the Vedas must have been written about 300 years before these Institutes, and about 600 before the Puranas and Itihasas, which, I am fully convinced, were not the productions of Vyasa; so that, if the son of Parasara committed the traditional Vedas to writing in the Sanscrit of his father’s time, the original of this book must have received its present form about 880 years before Christ’s birth. If the texts, indeed, which Vyasa collected, had been actually written in a much, older dialect, by the sages preceding him, we must inquire into the greatest possible age of the Vedas themselves: now one of the longest and finest Upanishads in the second Veda contains three lists, in a regular series upwards, of at most forty-two pupils and preceptors, who successively received and transmitted (probably by oral tradition) the doctrines contained in that Upanishad; and as the old Indian priests were students at fifteen, and instructors at twenty-five, we cannot allow more than ten years, on an average, for each interval between the respective traditions; whence, as there are forty such intervals, in two of the lists between Vyasa, who arranged the whole work, and Ayasya, who is extolled at the beginning of it, and just as many, in the third list, between the compiler and Yajnyawalcya, who makes the principal figure in it, we find the highest age of the Yajur Veda to be 1580 years before the birth of our Saviour, (which would make it older than the five books of Moses) and that of our Indian law tract about 1280 years before the same epoch. The former date, however, seems the more probable of the two, because the Hindu sages are said to have delivered their knowledge orally, and the very word Sruta, which we often see used for the Veda itself, means what was heard; not to insist that Culluca expressly declares the sense of the Veda to be conveyed in the language of Vyasa. Whether Menu or Menus in the nominative and Meno's in an oblique case, was the same personage with Minos [Minos was a mythical king in the island of Crete, the son of Zeus and Europa. He was famous for creating a successful code of laws; in fact, it was so grand that after his death, Minos became one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld. Minos, by Wikipedia], let others determine; but he must indubitably have been far older than the work, which contains his laws, and though perhaps he was never in Crete, yet some of his institutions may well have been adopted in that island, whence Lycurgus, a century or two afterwards, may have imported them to Sparta.

There is certainly a strong resemblance, though obscured and faded by time, between our Menu with his divine Bull, whom he names as Dherma himself, or the genius of abstract justice, and the Mneues of Egypt with his companion or symbol Apis;

Menes (fl. c. 3200–3000 BC; /ˈmiːniːz/; Ancient Egyptian: mnj, probably pronounced */maˈnij/; Ancient Greek: Μήνης) was a pharaoh of the Early Dynastic Period of ancient Egypt credited by classical tradition with having united Upper and Lower Egypt and as the founder of the First Dynasty.

The identity of Menes is the subject of ongoing debate, although mainstream Egyptological consensus identifies Menes with the Naqada III ruler Narmer (most likely) or First Dynasty pharaoh Hor-Aha. Both pharaohs are credited with the unification of Egypt to different degrees by various authorities...

The name mnj means "He who endures", which, I.E.S. Edwards (1971) suggests, may have been coined as "a mere descriptive epithet denoting a semi-legendary hero [...] whose name had been lost". Rather than a particular person, the name may conceal collectively the Naqada III rulers: Ka, Scorpion II and Narmer...

The almost complete absence of any mention of Menes in the archaeological record and the comparative wealth of evidence of Narmer, a protodynastic figure credited by posterity and in the archaeological record with a firm claim to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, has given rise to a theory identifying Menes with Narmer.

The chief archaeological reference to Menes is an ivory label from Naqada which shows the royal Horus-name Aha (the pharaoh Hor-Aha) next to a building, within which is the royal nebty-name mn, generally taken to be Menes. From this, various theories on the nature of the building (a funerary booth or a shrine), the meaning of the word mn (a name or the verb endures) and the relationship between Hor-Aha and Menes (as one person or as successive pharaohs) have arisen....

The commonly used name Hor-Aha is a rendering of the pharaoh's Horus-name, an element of the royal titulary associated with the god Horus, and is more fully given as Horus-Aha meaning Horus the Fighter.

Manetho's record Aegyptiaca (translating to History of Egypt) lists his Greek name as Athothis, or "Athotís".

-- Hor-Aha, by Wikipedia

The label shows a serekh [a rectangular enclosure presenting the niched or gated facade of a palace surmounted (usually) by the Horus falcon, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name] of Hor-Aha next to an enclosure inside of which are symbols that have been interpreted by some scholars as the name "Menes". The second is the seal impression from Abydos that alternates between a serekh of Narmer and the chessboard symbol, "mn", which is interpreted as an abbreviation of Menes. Arguments have been made with regard to each of these documents in favour of Narmer or Hor-Aha being Menes, but in neither case is the argument conclusive.



Ancient tradition ascribed to Menes the honour of having united Upper and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom and becoming the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty. However, his name does not appear on extant pieces of the Royal Annals (Cairo Stone and Palermo Stone), which is a now-fragmentary king's list that was carved onto a stela during the Fifth Dynasty. He typically appears in later sources as the first human ruler of Egypt, directly inheriting the throne from the god Horus. He also appears in other, much later, king's lists, always as the first human pharaoh of Egypt. Menes also appears in demotic novels of the Hellenistic period, demonstrating that, even that late, he was regarded as an important figure.

Menes was seen as a founding figure for much of the history of ancient Egypt, similar to Romulus in ancient Rome. Manetho records that Menes "led the army across the frontier and won great glory".

-- Menes, by Wikipedia

... and, though we should be constantly on our guard against the delusion of etymological conjecture, yet we cannot but admit that Minos and Mneues, or Mneuis, have only Greek terminations, but that the crude noun is composed of the same radical letters both in Greek and in Sanscrit.

'That Apis and Mneuis,' says the Analyst of ancient Mythology, ‘were both representations of some personage, appears from the testimony of Lycophron and his scholiast; and that personage was the same, who in Crete was styled Minos, and who was also represented under the emblem of the Minotaur; Diodorus, who confines him to Egypt, speaks of him by the title of the bull Mneuis, as the first lawgiver, and says, "That he lived after the age of the gods and heroes, when a change was made in the manner of life among men; that he was a man of a most exalted soul, and a great promoter of civil society, which he benefited by his laws; that those laws were unwritten, and received by him from the chief Egyptian deity Hermes, who conferred them on the world as a gift of the highest importance.” He was the same, adds my learned friend, with Menes, whom the Egyptians represented as their first king and principal benefactor, who first sacrificed to the gods, and brought about a great change in diet.’

Jacob Bryant (1715–1804) was an English scholar and mythographer, who has been described as "the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."


Bryant was born at Plymouth. His father worked in the customs there, but was afterwards moved to Chatham. Bryant was first sent to a school near Rochester, and then to Eton College. In 1736 he was elected to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he took his degrees of B.A. (1740) and M.A. (1744), later being elected a fellow. He returned to Eton as private tutor to the Duke of Marlborough [Royal Society]. In 1756 he accompanied the duke, who was master-general of ordnance and commander-in-chief of the forces in Germany, to the Continent as private secretary. He was rewarded by a lucrative appointment in the Board of Ordnance, which allowed him time to indulge his literary tastes.

His chief works were A New System or Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1774–76, and later editions), Observations on the Plain of Troy (1795), and Dissertation concerning the Wars of Troy (1796). He also wrote on theological, political and literary subjects.


Bryant saw all mythology as derived from the Hebrew Scriptures, with Greek mythology arising via the Egyptians. The New System attempted to link the mythologies of the world to the stories recorded in Genesis. Bryant argued that the descendants of Ham had been the most energetic, but also the most rebellious peoples of the world and had given rise to the great ancient and classical civilisations. He called these people "Amonians", because he believed that the Egyptian god Amon was a deified form of Ham. He argued that Ham had been identified with the sun, and that much of pagan European religion derived from Amonian sun worship.

John Richardson was Bryant's chief opponent, in the preface to his Persian Dictionary. In an anonymous pamphlet, An Apology, Bryant defended and reaffirmed his opinions. Richardson then revised the dissertation on languages prefixed to the dictionary, and added a second part: Further Remarks on the New Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1778). Bryant also wrote a pamphlet in answer to Daniel Wyttenbach of Amsterdam, about the same time. Sir William Jones frequently mentions Bryant's model, accepting parts of it and criticising others, particularly his highly conjectural etymologies. He referred to the New System as "a profound and agreeable work", adding that he had read it through three times "with increased attention and pleasure, though not with perfect acquiescence in some other less important parts of his plausible system"...

His theories are widely credited as an influence on the mythological system of William Blake, who had worked in his capacity as an engraver on the illustrations to Bryant's New System.

Classical scholar

In his books on Troy, Bryant endeavoured to show that the existence of Troy and the Greek expedition were purely mythological, with no basis in real history...

• Gemmarum Antiquarum Delectus (1783) was privately printed at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, with engravings by Francesco Bartolozzi. The first volume was written in Latin by Bryant, and translated into French by Matthew Maty; the second by William Cole, with the French by Louis Dutens.
• On the Zingara or Gypsey Language (1785) was read by Bryant to the Royal Society, and printed in the seventh volume of Archæologia.

-- Jacob Bryant [The Analyst of Ancient Mythology], by Wikipedia

If Minos, the son of Jupiter, whom the Cretans, from national vanity, might have made a native of their own island, was really the same person with Menu, the son of Brahma, we have the good fortune to restore, by means of Indian literature, the most celebrated system of heathen jurisprudence, and this work might have been entitled The Laws of Minos; but the paradox is too singular to be confidently asserted, and the geographical part of the book, with most of the allusions to natural history, must indubitably have been written after the Hindu race had settled to the south of Himalaya. We cannot but remark that the word Menu has no relation whatever to the Moon; and that it was the seventh, not the first of that name, whom the Brahmens believe to have been preserved in an ark from the general deluge: him they call the Child of the Sun, to distinguish him from our legislator; but they assign to his brother Yama the office (which the Greeks were pleased to confer on Minos) of Judge in the Shades below.

The name of Menu is clearly derived (like menes, mens, and mind) from the root men to understand; and it signifies, as all the Pandits agree, intelligent, particularly in the doctrines of the Veda, which the composer of our Dherna Sastra must have studied very diligently; since great numbers of its texts, changed only in a few syllables for the sake of the measure, are interspersed through the work, and cited at length in the commentaries: the Publick may, therefore, assure themselves, that they now possess a considerable part of the Hindu scripture, without the dullness of its profane ritual or much of its mystical jargon. Dara Shucuh was persuaded, and not without sound reason, that the first Menu of the Brahmens could be no other person than the progenitor of mankind, to whom Jews, Christians, and Muselmans, unite in giving the name of Adam; but, whoever he might have been he is highly honoured by name in the Veda itself, where it is declared, that 'whatever Menu pronounced, was a medicine for the soul,’ and the sage Vrihaspati, now supposed to preside over the planet Jupiter, says in his own law tract, that 'Menu held the first rank among legislators, because he had expressed in his code the whole sense of the Veda; that no code was approved, which contradicted Menu; that other Sastras, and treatises on grammar or logick, retained splendour so long only, as Menu, who taught the way to just wealth, to virtue and to final happiness, was not seen in competition with them:' Vyasa too, the son of Parasara before mentioned, has decided, that 'the Veda with its Angas, or the six compositions deduced from it, the revealed system of medicine, the Puranas, or sacred histories, and the code of Menu were four works of supreme authority, which ought never to be shaken by arguments merely human.’

It is the general opinion of Pandits, that Brahma taught his laws to Menu in a hundred thousand verses, which Menu explained to the primitive world, in the very words of the book now translated, where he names himself, after the manner of ancient sages, in the third person, but in a short preface to the law tract of Nared, it is asserted, that 'Menu, having written the laws of Brahma in a hundred thousand slocas or couplets, arranged under twenty-four heads in a thousand chapters, delivered the work to Nared, the sage among gods, who abridged it, for the use of mankind, in twelve thousand verses, and gave them to a son of Bhrigu, named Sumati, who, for greater ease to the human race, reduced them to four thousand; that mortals read only the second abridgement by Sumati, while the gods of the lower heaven, and the band of celestial musicians, are engaged in studying the primary code, beginning with the fifth verse, a little varied, of the work now extant on earth; but that nothing remains of NARED’s abridgement, except an elegant epitome of the ninth original title on the administration of justice.' Now, since these institutes consist only of two thousand six hundred and eighty five verses, they cannot be the whole work ascribed to Sumati, which is probably distinguished by the name of the Vriddha, or ancient Manava, and cannot be found entire; though several passages from it, which have been preserved by tradition, are occasionally cited in the new digest.

A number of glosses or comments on Menu were composed by the Munis, or old philosophers, whose treatises, together with that before us, constitute the Dherma sastra, in a collective sense, or Body of Law; among the more modern commentaries, that called Medhatithi, that by Govindaraja, and that by Dharani-Dhera, were once in the greatest repute; but the first was reckoned prolix and unequal; the second concise but obscure; and the third often erroneous. At length appeared Culluca Bhatta; who, after a painful course of study and the collation of numerous manuscripts, produced a work, of which it may, perhaps, be said very truly, that it is the shortest, yet the most luminous, the least ostentatious, yet the most learned, the deepest, yet the most agreeable, commentary ever composed on any author ancient or modern, European or Asiatick. The Pandits care so little for genuine chronology, that none of them can tell me the age of Culluca, whom they always name with applause; but he informs us himself, that he was a Brahmen of the Varendra tribe, whose family had been long settled in Gaur or Bengal, but that he had chosen his residence among the learned, on the banks of the holy river at Casi. His text and interpretation I have almost implicitly followed, though I had myself collated many copies of Menu, and among them a manuscript of a very ancient date: his gloss is here printed in Italicks; and any reader, who may choose to pass it over as if unprinted, will have in Roman letters an exact version of the original, and may form some idea of its character and structure, as well as of the Sanscrit idiom which must necessarily be preserved in a verbal translation; and a translation, not scrupulously verbal, would have been highly improper in a work on so delicate and momentous a subject as private and criminal jurisprudence.

Should a series of Brahmens omit, for three generations, the reading of Menu, their sacerdotal class, as all the Pandits assure me, would in strictness be forfeited; but they must explain it only to their pupils of the three highest classes; and the Brahmen, who read it with me, requested most earnestly, that his name might be concealed; nor would he have read it for any consideration on a forbidden day of the moon, or without the ceremonies prescribed in the second and fourth chapters for a lecture on the Veda: so great, indeed, is the idea of sanctity annexed to this book, that, when the chief native magistrate at Banares endeavoured, at my request, to procure a Persian translation of it, before I had a hope of being at any time able to understand the original, the Pandits of his court unanimously and positively refused to assist in the work; nor should I have procured it at all, if a wealthy Hindu at Gaya had not caused the version to be made by some of his dependants, at the desire of my friend Mr. Law. The Persian translation of Menu, like all others from the Sanscrit into that language, is a rude intermixture of the text, loosely rendered, with some old or new comment, and often with the crude notions of the translator; and though it expresses the general sense of the original, yet it swarms with errours, imputable partly to haste, and partly to ignorance: thus where Menu says, that emissaries are the eyes of a prince, the Persian phrase makes him ascribe four eyes to the person of a king; for the word char, which means an emissary in Sanscrit, signifies four in the popular dialect.

The work, now presented to the European world, contains abundance of curious matter extremely interesting both to speculative lawyers and antiquaries, with many beauties which need not be pointed out, and with many blemishes which cannot be justified or palliated. It is a system of despotism and priestcraft, both indeed limited by law, but artfully conspiring to give mutual support, though with mutual checks; it is filled with strange conceits in metaphysicks and natural philosophy, with idle superstitions, and with a scheme of theology most obscurely figurative, and consequently liable to dangerous misconception; it abounds with minute and childish formalities, with ceremonies generally absurd and often ridiculous; the punishments are partial and fanciful; for some crimes, dreadfully cruel, for others, reprehensibly slight; and the very morals, though rigid enough on the whole, are in one or two instances (as in the case of light oaths and of pious perjury) unaccountably relaxed: nevertheless, a spirit of sublime devotion, of benevolence to mankind, and of amiable tenderness to all sentient creatures, pervades the whole work; the style of it has a certain austere majesty, that sounds like the language of legislation, and extorts a respectful awe; the sentiments of independence on all beings but God, and the harsh admonitions, even to kings, are truly noble; and the many panegyricks on the Gayatri, the Mother as it is called, of the Veda, prove the author to have adored (not the visible material sun, but) that divine and incomparably greater light, to use the words of the most venerable text in the Indian scripture, which illumines all, delights all, from which all proceed, to which all must return, and which alone can irradiate (not our visual organs merely, but our souls and) our intellects. Whatever opinion in short may be formed of Menu and his laws, in a country happily enlightened by sound philosophy and the only true revelation, it must be remembered, that those laws are actually revered, as the word of the Most High, by nations of great importance to the political and commercial interests of Europe, and particularly by many millions of Hindu subjects, whose well directed industry would add largely to the wealth of Britain, and who ask no more in return than protection for their persons and places of abode, justice in their temporal concerns, indulgence to the prejudices of their old religion, and the benefit of those laws, which they have been taught to believe sacred, and which alone they can possibly comprehend.

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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Wed Jul 21, 2021 8:19 am

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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:59 am

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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:59 am


On Marriage; or on the Second Order.

1. 'The discipline of a student in the three Vedas may be continued for thirty-six years, in the house of his preceptor; or for half that time, or for a quarter of it, or until he perfectly comprehend them:

2. 'A student, whose rules have not been violated, may assume the order of a married man, after he has read in succession a sacha, or branch from each of the three, or from two, or from any one of them.

3. 'Being justly applauded for the strict performance of his duty, and having received from his natural or spiritual father the sacred gift of the Veda, let him sit on an elegant bed, decked with a garland of flowers, and let his father honour him before his nuptials, with a present of a cow.

4. ‘Let the twice born man, having obtained the consent of his venerable guide, and having performed his ablution with stated ceremonies, on his return home, as the law directs, espouse a wife of the same class with himself and endued with the marks of excellence.

5. ‘She, who is not descended from his paternal or maternal ancestors, within the sixth degree, and who is not known by her family name to be of the same primitive stock with his father or mother, is eligible by a twice born man for nuptials and holy union:

6. In connecting himself with a wife, let him studiously avoid the ten following families, be they ever so great, or ever so rich in kine, goats, sheep, gold and grain:  

7. 'The family which has omitted prescribed acts of religion; that which has produced no male children; that in which the Veda has not been read; that which has thick hair on the body; and those, which have been subject to hemorrhoids, to phthisis, to dispepsia, to epilepsy, to leprosy, and to elephantiasis.

8. ‘Let him not marry a girl with reddish hair, nor with any deformed limb; nor one troubled with habitual sickness; nor one either with no hair or with too much; nor one immoderately talkative; nor one with inflamed eyes;

9. ‘Nor one with the name of a constellation, of a tree or of a river, of a barbarous nation, or of a mountain, of a winged creature, a snake, or a slave; nor with any name raising an image of terrour.

10. 'Let him chuse for his wife a girl, whose form has no defect; who has an agreeable name; who walks gracefully like a phenicopteros, or like a young elephant; whose hair and teeth are moderate respectively in quantity and in size; whose body has exquisite softness.

11. 'Her, who has no brother, or whose father is not well known, let no sensible man espouse, through fear lest, in the former case, her father should take her first son as his own to perform his obsequies; or, in the second case, lest an illicit marriage should be contracted.

12. ‘For the first marriage of the twice born classes, a woman of the same class is recommended; but for such as are impelled by inclination to marry again, women in the direct order of the classes are to be preferred:

13. 'A Sudra woman only must be the wife of a Sudra; she and a Vaisya, of a Vaisya; they two and a Cshatriya, of a Cshatriya; those two and a Brahman of a Brahmen.

14. ‘A woman of the servile class is not mentioned, even in the recital of any ancient story, as the first wife of a Brahmen or of a Cshatriya, though in the greatest difficulty to find a suitable match.

15. ‘Men of the twice born classes, who through weakness of intellect, irregularly marry women of the lowest class, very soon degrade their families and progeny to the state of Sudras:

16. ‘According to Atri and to (Gotama) the son of Utathya, he who thus marries a woman of the servile class, if he be a priest, is degraded instantly; according to Saunaca, on the birth of a son, if he be a warriour; and, if he be a merchant, on the birth of a son’s son, according to (me) Bhrigu.

17. 'A Brahmen, if he take a Sudra to his bed, as his first wife, links to the regions of torment; if he beget a child by her, he loses even his priestly rank:

18. 'His sacrifices to the Gods, his oblations to the Manes, and his hospitable attentions to strangers, must be supplied principally by her; but the Gods and Manes will not eat such offerings; nor can heaven be attained by such hospitality.

19. ‘For the crime of him, who thus illegally drinks the moisture of a Sudra's lips, who is tainted by her breath, and who even begets a child on her body, the law declares no expiation.

20. 'Now learn compendiously the eight forms of the nuptial ceremony, used by the four classes, some good and some bad in this world, and in the next:

21. 'The ceremony of Brahma, of the Devas of the Rishis, of the Prajapatis, of the Asuras, of the Gandharvas, and of the Racshasas; the eighth and basest is that of the Pisachas.

22. ‘Which of them is permitted by law to each class and what are the good and bad properties  of each ceremony, all this I will fully declare to you, together with the qualities, good and bad, of the offspring.

23. 'Let mankind know, that the six first in direct order are by some held valid in the case of a priest; the four last, in that of a warriour; and the same four, except the Racshasa marriage, in the cases of a merchant and a man of the servile class:

24. Some consider the four first only as approved in the case of a priest; one, that of Racshasas, as peculiar to a soldier; and that of Asuras, to a mercantile and a servile man:

23. 'But in this code, three of the five last are held legal, and two illegal: the ceremonies of Pisachas and Asuras must never be performed.

26. 'For a military man the before mentioned marriages of Gandharvas and Racshasas, whether separate or mixed, as when a girl is made captive by her lover, after a victory over her kinsmen, are permitted by law.

27. 'The gift of a daughter, clothed only with a single robe, to a man learned in the Veda, whom her father voluntarily invites, and respectfully receives, is the nuptial right called Brahma.

28. ‘The rite which sages call Daiva, is the gift of a daughter, whom her father has decked in gay attire, when the sacrifice is already begun, to the officiating priest, who performs that act of religion.

29. 'When the father gives his daughter away, after having received from the bridegroom one pair of kine, or two pairs, for uses prescribed by law, that marriage is termed Arsha.

30. The nuptial rite called Prajapatya, is when the father gives away his daughter with due honour, saying distinctly, "May both of you perform together your civil and religious duties!”

31. 'When the bridegroom, having given as much wealth as he can afford to the father and paternal kinsmen, and to the damsel herself, takes her voluntarily as his bride, that marriage is named Asura.

32. ‘The reciprocal connection of a youth and a damsel, with mutual desire, is the marriage denominated Gandharva, contracted for the purpose of amorous embraces, and proceeding from sensual inclination.

33. 'The seizure of a maiden by force from her house, while she weeps and calls for assistance, after her kinsmen and friends have been slain in battle, or wounded, and their houses broken open, is the marriage styled Racshasa.

34. 'When the lover secretly embraces the damsel, either sleeping or flushed with strong liquor, or disordered in her intellect, that sinful marriage, called Pisacha, is the eighth and the basest.

35. ‘The gift of daughters in marriage by the sacerdotal class, is most approved, when they previously have poured water into the hands of the bridegroom; but the ceremonies of the other classes may be performed according to their several fancies.

36. 'Among these nuptial rites, what quality is ascribed by Menu to each, hear now ye Brahmens, hear it all from me, who fully declare it!

37. 'The son of a Brahm, or wife by the first ceremony, redeems from sin, if he perform virtuous acts, ten ancestors, ten descendants, and himself the twenty-first person.

38. 'A son, born of a wife by the Daiva nuptials, redeems seven and seven in higher and lower degrees; of a wife by the Arsha three and three; of a wife by the Prajapatya six and six.

39. ‘By four marriages, the Brahma and so forth, in direct order, are born sons illumined by the Veda, learned men, beloved by the learned,

40. 'Adorned with beauty, and with the quality of goodness, wealthy, famed, amply gratified with lawful enjoyments, performing all duties, and living an hundred years:

41. 'But in the other four base marriages, which remain, are produced sons acting cruelly, speaking falsely, abhorring the Veda, and the duties prescribed in it.

42. 'From the blameless nuptial rites of men springs a blameless progeny; from the reprehensible, a reprehensible offspring: let mankind, therefore, studiously avoid the culpable forms of marriage.

43. 'The ceremony of joining hands is appointed for those, who marry women of their own class; but, with women of a different class, the following nuptial ceremonies are to be observed:

44. 'By a Cshatriya on her marriage with a Brahmen, an arrow must be held in her hand; by a Vaisya woman, with a bridegroom of the sacerdotal or military class, a whip; and by a Sudra bride, marrying a priest a soldier, or a merchant, must be held the skirt of a mantle.

45. 'Let the husband approach his wife in due season, that is, at the time fit for pregnancy; let him be constantly satisfied with her alone; but, except on the forbidden days of the moon, he may approach her, being affectionately disposed, even out of due season, with a desire of conjugal intercourse.

46. 'Sixteen days and nights in each month, with four distinct days neglected by the virtuous, are called the natural season of women:

47. 'Of those sixteen, the four first, the eleventh, and the thirteenth, are reprehended: the ten remaining nights are approved.

48. 'Some say, that on the even nights are conceived sons; on the odd nights daughters; therefore let the man, who wishes for a son, approach his wife in due season on the even nights;

49. 'But a boy is in truth produced by the greater quantity of the male strength; and a girl by a greater quantity of the female; by equality, an hermaphrodite, or a boy and a girl; by weakness or deficiency, is occasioned a failure of conception.

50. 'He, who avoids conjugal embraces on the six reprehended nights and on eight others, is equal in chastity to a Brahmachari, in whichever of the two next orders he may live.

51: ‘Let no father, who knows the law, receive a gratuity, however small, for giving his daughter in marriage; since the man, who, through avarice, takes a gratuity for that purpose, is a seller of his offspring.

52. 'Whatever male relations, through delusion of mind, take possession of a woman’s property, be it only her carriages or her clothes, such offenders will sink to a region of torment.

53. 'Some say that the bull and cow given in the nuptial ceremony of the Rishis, are a bribe to the father; but this is untrue: a bribe indeed, whether large or small, is an actual sale of the daughter.

54. 'When money or goods are given to damsels, whose kinsmen receive them not for their own use, it is no sale: it is merely a token of courtesy and affection to the brides.

55. 'Married women must be honoured and adorned by their fathers and brethren, by their husbands, and by the brethren of their husbands, if they seek abundant prosperity:

56. ‘Where females are honoured, there the deities are pleased; but where they are dishonoured, there all religious acts become fruitless.

57. 'Where female relations are made miserable, the family of him who makes them so, very soon wholly perishes; but, where they are not unhappy, the family always increases.  

58. 'On whatever houses the women of a family, not being duly honoured, pronounce an imprecation, those houses, with all that belong to them, utterly perish, as if destroyed by a sacrifice for the death of an enemy.

59. 'Let those women, therefore, be continually  supplied with ornaments, apparel and food, at festivals and at jubilees, by men desirous of wealth.

60. ‘In whatever family the husband is contented with his wife, and the wife with her husband, in that house will fortune be assuredly permanent.

61. 'Certainly, if the wife be not elegantly attired, she will not exhilarate her husband; and if her lord want hilarity, offspring will not be produced.

62. 'A wife being gaily adorned, her whole house is embellished; but, if she be destitute of ornament, all will be deprived of decoration.

63. ‘By culpable marriages, by omission of prescribed ceremonies, by neglect of reading the Veda, and by irreverence toward a Brahmen, great families are sunk to a low state.

64. ‘So they are by practising manual arts, by lending at interest and other pecuniary transactions, by begetting children on Sudras only, by traffick in kine, horses, and carriages, by agriculture and by attendance on a king.

65. ‘By sacrificing for such as have no right to sacrifice, and by denying a future compensation for good works, great families, being deprived of sacred knowledge, are quickly destroyed;

66. 'But families, enriched by a knowledge of the Veda, though possessing little temporal wealth, are numbered among the great, and acquire exalted fame.

67. 'Let the house-keeper perform domestic religious rites, with the nuptial fire, according to law, and the ceremonies of the five great sacraments, and the several acts which must day by day be performed.

68 'A house-keeper has five places of slaughter, or where small living creatures may be slain; his kitchen hearth, his grindstone, his broom, his pestle and mortar, his water pot; by using which, he becomes in bondage to sin:

69. ‘For the sake of expiating offences committed ignorantly in those places mentioned in order, the five great sacraments were appointed by eminent sages to be performed each day by such as keep house.

70. 'Teaching and studying the scripture is the sacrament of the Veda; offering cakes and water, the sacrament of the Manes; an oblation to fire, the sacrament of the Deities; giving rice or other food to living creatures, the sacrament of spirits; receiving guests with honour, the sacrament of men;

71. 'Whoever omits not those five great ceremonies, if he have ability to perform them, is untainted by the sins of the five slaughtering places, even though he constantly reside at home;

72. 'But whoever cherishes not five orders of beings, namely, the deities; those, who demand hospitality; those, whom he ought by law to maintain; his departed forefathers; and himself; that man lives not even though he breathe.

73. ‘Some call the five sacraments ahuta and huta, prahuta, brahmya-huta and prasita:

74. 'Ahuta, or unoffered, is divine study; huta, or offered, is the oblation to fire; prahuta, or well offered, is the food given to spirits; brahmya-huta, is respect shewn to twice born guests; and prasita, or well eaten, is the offering of rice or water to the manes of ancestors.

75. 'Let every man in this second order employ himself daily in reading the scripture, and in performing the sacrament of the Gods; for, being employed in the sacrament of deities, he supports this whole animal and vegetable world;

76. 'Since his oblation of clarified butter, duly cast into the flame, ascends in smoke to the fire; from the fire it falls in rain; from rain comes vegetable food; and from such food animals derive their subsistence.

77. 'As all creatures subsist by receiving support from air, thus all orders of men exist by receiving support from house-keepers;

78. 'And since men of the three other orders are each day nourished by them with divine learning and with food, a house-keeper is for this reason of the most eminent order:

79. 'That order, therefore, must be constantly sustained with great care by the man who seeks unperishable bliss in heaven, and in this world pleasurable sensations; an order which cannot be sustained by men with uncontrolled organs.

80. 'The divine sages, the manes, the gods, the spirits, and guests, pray for benefits to masters of families; let these honours, therefore, be done to them by the house-keeper who knows his duty;

81. 'Let him honour the Sages by studying the Veda: the Gods, by oblations to fire ordained by law; the Manes, by pious obsequies; men by supplying them with food; and spirits, by gifts to all animated creatures.

82. 'Each day let him perform a sraddha with boiled rice and the like, or with water, or with milk, roots, and fruit; for thus he obtains favour from departed progenitors.

83. 'He may entertain one Brahmen in that sacrament among the five, which is performed for the Pitris; but, at the oblation to all the Gods, let him not invite even a single priest.

84. 'In his domestic fire for dressing the food of all the Gods, after the prescribed ceremony, let a Brahmen make an oblation each day to these following divinities;

85. ‘First to Agni, god of fire, and to the Lunar God, severally; then, to both of them at once; next to the assembled gods; and afterwards, to Dhanwantari, god of medicine;

86. 'To Cuhu', goddess of the day, when the new moon is discernible; to Anumati, goddess of the day, after the opposition; to Prajapati, or the Lord of Creatures; to DYAVA and Prithivi, goddesses of sky and earth; and lastly, to the fire of the good sacrifice.

87. ‘Having thus, with fixed attention, offered clarified butter in all quarters, proceeding from the east in a southern direction to Indra, Yama, Varuna, and the god Soma, let him offer his gift to animated creatures:

88. 'Saying, “I salute the Maruts," or Winds, let him throw dressed rice near the door; saying, "I salute the water gods,” in water; and on his pestle and mortar, saying, "I salute the gods of large trees."

89. ‘Let him do the like in the north east, or near his pillow, to Sri, the goddess of abundance; in the south west, or at the foot of his bed, to the propitious goddess Bgadracali; in the centre of his mansion, to Brahma and his household God;

90. ‘To all the Gods assembled, let him throw up his oblation in the open air; by day, to the spirits who walk in light; and by night, to those who walk in darkness:

91. In the building on his house top, or behind his back, let him cast his oblation for the welfare ‘f all creatures; and what remains let him give to the Pitris with his face toward the south:

92. 'The share of dogs, of outcasts, of dog-feeders, of sinful men, punished with elephantiasis or consumption, of crows, and of reptiles, let him drop on the ground by little and little.

93. ‘A Brahmen, who thus each day shall honour all beings, will go to the highest region in a straight path, in an irradiated form.

94. 'When he has performed his duty of making oblations, let him cause his guest to take food before himself; and let him give a portion of rice, as the law ordains, to the mendicant who studies the Veda:

95. ‘Whatever fruit shall be obtained by that student, as the reward of his virtue, when he shall have given a cow to his preceptor, according to law, the like reward to virtue shall be obtained by the twice born house-keeper, when he has given a mouthful of rice to the religious mendicant.

96. 'To a Brahmen who knows the true principle of the Veda, let him present a portion of rice, or a pot of water, garnished with fruit and flowers, due ceremonies having preceded:

97. 'Shares of oblations to the Gods, or to the Manes, utterly perish, when presented, through delusion of mind, by men regardless of duty, to such ignorant Brahmens as are mere ashes;

98. 'But an offering in the fire of a sacerdotal mouth, which richly blazes with true knowledge and piety, will release the giver from distress, and even from deadly sin.

99. 'To the guest who comes of his own accord, let him offer a seat and water, with such food as he is able to prepare, after the due rites of courtesy.

100. 'A Brahmen coming as a guest, and not received with just honour, takes to himself all the reward of the house-keeper’s former virtue, even though he had been so temporate as to live on the gleanings of harvests, and so pious as to make oblations in five distinct fires.

101. 'Grass and earth to sit on, water to wash the feet, and, fourthly affectionate speech are at no time deficient in the mansions of the good, although they may be indigent.

102. 'A Brahmen, staying but one night as a guest, is called an atithi; since continuing so short a time, he is not even a sojourner for a whole tithi, or day of the moon.

103. 'The house-keeper must not consider as an atithi a mere visitor of the same town, or a Brahmen, who attends him on business, even though he come to the house where his wife dwells, and where his fires are kindled,

104. 'Should any house-keepers be so senseless, as to seek, on pretence of being guests, the food of others, they would fall after death, by reason of that baseness, to the condition of cattle belonging to the giver of such food.

105. 'No guest must be dismissed in the evening by a house keeper; he is sent by the retiring sun; and, whether he come in fit season or unseasonably, he must not sojourn in the house without entertainment.

106. 'Let not himself eat any delicate food, without asking his guest to partake of it: the satisfaction of a guest will assuredly bring the house-keeper wealth, reputation, long life, and a place in heaven.

107. 'To the highest guest in the best form, to the lowest in the worst, to the equal, equally, let him offer seats, resting places, couches; giving them proportionable attendance, when they depart; and honour as long as they stay.

108. 'Should another guest arrive, when the oblation to all the Gods is concluded, for him also let the house-keeper prepare food, according to his ability; but let him not repeat his offerings to animated beings.

109. ‘Let no Brahmen guest proclaim his family and ancestry for the sake of an entertainment; since he, who thus proclaims them, is called by the wife a vantasi, or foul-feeding demon.

110. 'A military man is not denominated a guest in the house of a Brahmen; nor a man of the commercial or servile class; nor his familiar friend; nor his paternal kinsman; nor his preceptor:

111. 'But if a warriour come to his house in the form of a guest, let food be prepared for him, according to his desire, after the beforementioned Brahmens have eaten.

112. 'Even to a merchant or a labourer, approaching his house in the manner of guests, let him give food, showing marks of benevolence at the same time with his domesticks:

113. 'To others, as familiar friends, and the rest before-named, who come with affection to his place of abode, let him serve a repast at the same time with his wife and himself, having amply provided it according to his best means.

114. 'To a bride, and to a damsel, to the sick, and to pregnant women, let him give food, even before his guests, without hesitation.

115. 'The idiot, who first eats his own mess, without having presented food to the persons just enumerated, knows not, while he crams, that he will himself be food after death for bandogs and vultures.

116. 'After the repast of the Brahmen guest, of his kinsmen, and his domesticks, the married couple may eat what remains untouched.

117. 'The house-keeper, having honoured spirits, holy sages, men, progenitors, and household gods, may feed on what remains after those oblations.

118. 'He, who eats what has been dressed for himself only, eats nothing but sin: a repast on what remains after the sacrament is called the banquet of the good.

119. ‘After a year from the reception of a visitor, let the house-keeper again honour a king, a sacrificer, a student returned from his preceptor, a son-in-law, a father-in-law, and a maternal uncle, with a madhuperca, or present of honey, curds, and fruit.

120. ‘A king or a Brahmen arriving at the celebration of the sacrament, are to be honoured with a madhuperca; but not, if the sacrament be over: this is a settled rule.

121. ‘In the evening let the wife make an offering of the dressed food, but without pronouncing any text of the Veda: one oblation to the assembled gods, thence named Vaidwadeva, is ordained both for evening and morning.

122. ‘From month to month, on the dark day of the moon, let a twice born man, having finished the daily sacrament of the Pitris, and his fire being still blazing, perform the solemn sraddha, called pindanwaharya:

123. ‘Sages have distinguished the monthly sraddha by the title of anwaharya, or after eaten, that is, eaten after the pinda or ball of rice; and it must be performed with extreme care, and with flesh meat in the best condition.

124. ‘What Brahmens must be entertained at that ceremony, and who must be accepted, how many are to be fed, and with what sorts of food, on all those articles, without omission, I will fully discourse.

125. At the sraddha of the gods he may entertain two Brahmens; at that of his father, paternal grandfather, and paternal great-grandfather, three; or one only at that of the god; and one at that for his three paternal ancestors: though he abound in wealth, let him not be solicitous to entertain a large company.

126. ‘A large company destroys these five advantages;  reverence to priests, propriety of time and place, purity, and the acquisition of virtuous Brahmens: let him not therefore, endeavour to feed a superfluous number.

127. 'This act of due honour to departed souls, 'on the dark day of the moon, is famed by the appellation of pitrya, or ancestral: the legal ceremony, in honour of departed spirits, rewards with continual fruit, a man engaged in such obsequies.

128. 'Oblations to the gods and to ancestors should be given to a most reverend Brahmen, perfectly conversant with the Veda; since what is given to him produces the greatest reward.

129. 'By entertaining one learned man at the oblation to the gods and at that to ancestors, he gains more exalted fruit than by feeding a multitude, who know not the holy texts.

130. 'Let him inquire into the ancestry, even in a remote degree, of a Brahmen, who has advanced to the end of the Veda: such a man, if sprung from good men, is a fit partaker of oblations to gods and to ancestors; such a man may justly be called an atithi, or guest.

131. 'Surely, though a million of men, unlearned in holy texts, were to receive food, yet a single man, learned in scripture, and fully satisfied with his entertainment, would be of more value than all of them together.

132. 'Food, consecrated to the gods and the manes, must be presented to a theologian of eminent learning; for certainly, when hands are smeared with blood, they cannot be cleaned with blood only, nor can sin he removed by the company of sinners,

133. ‘As many mouthfuls as an unlearned man shall swallow at an oblation to the gods and to ancestors, so many red hot iron balls must the giver of the sraddha swallow in the next world.

134. 'Some Brahmens are intent on scriptural knowledge; others, on austere devotion; some are intent both on religious austerity and on the study of the Veda; others on the performance of sacred rites:

135. ‘Oblations to the manes of ancestors ought to be placed with care before such as are intent on sacred learning: but offerings to the gods may be presented, with due ceremonies, to Brahmens of all the four descriptions.

136. 'There may be a Brahmen, whose father had not studied the scripture, though the son has advanced to the end of the Veda; or there may be one, whose son has not read the Veda, though the father had travelled to the end of it:

137. ‘Of those two let mankind consider him as the superiour, whose father had studied the scripture, yet for the sake of performing rites with holy texts, the other is worthy of honour.

138. ‘Let no man, at the prescribed obsequies, give food to an intimate friend; since advantage to a friend must be procured by gifts of different property: to that Brahmen let the performer of a sraddha give food, whom he considers neither as a friend nor as a foe.

139. ‘For him, whose obsequies and offerings of clarified butter are provided chiefly through friendship, no fruit is reserved in the next life, on account either of his obsequies or of his offerings.

140. ‘The man, who, through delusion of intellect, forms temporal connexions by obsequies, is excluded from heavenly mansions, as a giver of the sraddha for the sake of friendship, and the meanest of twice born men:

141. 'Such a convivial present, by men of the three highest classes, is called the gift of Pisachas, and remains fixed here below, like a blind cow in one stall,

142. 'As a husbandman, having sown feed in a barren soil, reaps no grain, thus a performer of holy rites, having given clarified butter to an unlearned Brahmen, attains no reward in heaven;

143. 'But a present made, as the law ordains, to a learned theologian, renders both the giver and the receiver partakers of good fruits in this world and in the next.

144. 'If no learned Brahmen be at hand, he may at his pleasure invite a friend to the sraddha, but not a foe, be he ever so learned; since the oblation, being eaten by a foe, loses all fruit in the life to come.

145. 'With great care let him give food at the sraddha to a priest, who has gone through the scripture, but has chiefly studied the Rigveda; to one, who has read all the branches, but principally those of the Yajush; or to one who has finished the whole, with particular attention to  the Saman:

146. 'Of that man whose oblation has been eaten, after due honours, by any one of those three Brahmens, the ancestors are constantly satisfied as high as the seventh person, or to the sixth degree.

147. 'This is the chief rule in offering the sraddha to the gods and to ancestors: but the following may be considered as a subsidiary rule, where no such learned priests can he found, and is ever observed by good men:

148. 'Let him entertain his maternal grandfather, his maternal uncle, the son of his sister, the father of his wife, his spiritual guide, the son of his daughter, or her husband, his maternal cousin, his officiary priest, or the performer of his sacrifice.

149. ‘ For an oblation to the gods, let not the man, who knows what is law, scrupulously inquire into the parentage of a Brahmen; but for a prepared oblation to ancestors let him examine it with strict care.

150. 'Those Brahmens, who have committed any inferiour theft or any of the higher crimes, who are deprived of virility, or who profess a disbelief in a future state, Menu has pronounced unworthy of honour at a sraddha to the gods or to ancestors.

151. ‘To a student in theology, who has not read the Veda, to a man punished for past crimes by being born without a prepuce, to a gamester, and to such as perform many sacrifices for other men, let him never give food at the sacred obsequies,

152. ‘Physicians, image worshippers for gain, sellers of meat, and such as live by low traffick, must be shunned in oblations both to the deities and to progenitors.

153. 'A public servant of the whole town, or of the prince, a man with whitlows on his nails, or with black yellow teeth, an opposer of his preceptor, a deserter of the sacred fire, and an usurer,

154. 'A phthisical man, a feeder of cattle, one omitting the five great sacraments, a contemner of Brahmens, a younger brother married before the elder, an elder brother not married before the younger, and a man who subsists by the wealth of many relations,

155. 'A dancer, one who has violated the rule of chastity in the first or fourth order, the husband of a Sudra, the son of a twice married woman, a man who has lost one eye, and a husband in whose house an adulterer dwells,

156. 'One who teaches the Veda for wages, and one who gives wages to such a teacher, the pupil of a Sudra, and the Sudra preceptor, a rude speaker, and the son of an adulteress, born either before or after the death of the husband,

157. 'A forsaker, without just cause, of his mother, father or preceptor, and a man who forms a connexion, either by scriptural or connubial affinity, with great sinners,

158. 'A house-burner, a giver of poison, an eater of food offered by the son of an adulteress, a seller of the moon plant, a species of mountain rue, a navigator of the ocean, a poetical encomiast, an oilman, and a suborner of perjury,

159. 'A wrangler with his father, an employer of gamesters for his own benefit, a drinker of intoxicating spirits, a man punished for sin with elephantiasis, one of evil repute, a cheat, and a seller of liquids,

160. 'A maker of bows and arrows, the husband of a younger sister married before the elder of the whole blood, an injurer of his friend, the keeper of a gaming-house, and a father instructed in the Veda by his own son,

161. 'An epileptick person, one who has the erysipelas or the leprosy, a common informer, a lunatick, a blind man, and a despiser of scripture, must all be shunned.

162. 'A tamer of elephants, bulls, horses, or camels, a man who subsists by astrology, a keeper of birds, and one who teaches the use of arms,

163. 'He, who diverts watercourses, and he, who is gratified by obstructing them, he, who builds houses for gain, a messenger, and a planter of trees for pay,

164. 'A breeder of sporting dogs, a falconer, a seducer of damsels, a man delighting in mischief, a Brahmen living as a Sudra, a sacrificer to the inferiour gods only,

165. 'He, who observes not approved customs, and he, who regards not prescribed duties, a constant importunate asker of favours, he, who supports himself by tillage, a clubfooted man, and one despised by the virtuous,

166. ‘A shepherd, a keeper of buffalos, the husband of a twice married woman, and the remover of dead bodies for pay, are to be avoided with great care.

167. 'Those lowest of Brahmens, whose manners are contemptible, who are not admissible into company at a repast, an exalted and learned priest must avoid at both sraddhas.

168. 'A Brahmen unlearned in holy writ, is extinguished in an instant like a fire of dry grass: to him the oblation must not be given; for the clarified butter must not be poured on ashes.

169. 'What retribution is prepared in the next life for the giver of food to men inadmissible into company, at the sraddha to the gods and to ancestors, I will now declare without omission.

170. 'On that food, which has been given to Brahmens who have violated the rules of their order, to the younger brother married before the elder, and to the rest who are not admissible into company, the Racshases eagerly feast.

171. 'He, who makes a marriage contract with the connubial fire, while his elder brother continues unmarried, is called a perivettri; and the elder brother a perivitti:

172. ‘The perivettri, the perivitti, the damsel thus wedded, the giver of her in wedlock, and, fifthly, the performer of the nuptial sacrifice, all sink to a region of torment.

173. ‘He, who lasciviously dallies with the widow of his deceased brother, though she be legally married to him, is denominated the husband of a didhishu,

174. 'Two sons, named a cunda and a golaca, are born in adultery; the cunda, while the husband is alive, and the golaca, when the husband is dead:

175. ‘Those animals begotten by adulterers, destroy, both in this world and in the next, the food presented to them by such as make oblations to the gods or to the manes.

176. 'The foolish giver of a sraddha loses, in a future life, the fruit of as many admissible guests, as a thief or the like person, inadmissible into company, might be able to see.

177. 'A blind man placed where one with eyes might have seen, destroys the reward of ninety; he, who has lost one eye, of sixty; a leper, of an hundred; one punished with elephantiasis, of a thousand.

178. 'Of the gift at a sraddha, to as many Brahmens, as a sacrificer for a Sidra might be able to touch on the body, the fruit is lost to the giver, if he invite such a wretch;

179. 'And if a Brahmen who knows the Veda, receive through covetousness a present from such a sacrificer, he speedily sinks to perdition, like a figure of unburnt clay in water.

180. 'Food given to a seller of the moon plant, becomes ordure in another world; to a physician purulent blood; and the giver will be a reptile bred in them: if offered to an image worshipper, it is thrown away; if to an usurer, infamous.

181. 'That which is given to a trader, endures neither in this life nor in the next, and that bestowed on a Brahmen, who has married a widow, resembles clarified butter poured on ashes as an oblation to fire.

182. 'That food, which is given to other base and inadmissible men, before mentioned, the wise have pronounced to be no more than animal oil, blood, flesh, skin, and bones.

183. 'Now learn comprehensively, by what Brahmens a company may be purified, when it has been defiled by inadmissable persons; Brahmens, the chief of their class, the purifiers of every assembly.

184. 'Those priests must be considered as the purifiers of a company who are most learned in all the Vedas and all their Angas, together with their defendants who have read the whole scripture;

185 ‘A priest learned in a principal part of the Yajurveda; one who keeps the five fires constantly burning; one skilled in a principal part of the Rigveda; one who explains the six Vedangas; the son of a Brahmi, or woman married by the Brahma ceremony; and one who chants the principal Saman;

186. 'One who propounds the sense of the Vedas, which he learnt from his preceptor, a student who has given a thousand cows for pious uses, and a Brahmen a hundred years old, must all be considered as the purifiers of a party at a sraddha.

187. 'On the day before the sacred obsequies, or on the very day when they are prepared, let the performer of them invite, with due honour, such Brahmens as have been mentioned; usually one superiour, who has three inferiour to him.

188. 'The Brahmen, who has been invited to a sraddha for departed ancestors, must be continually abstemious; he must not even read the Vedas; and he who performs the ceremony, must act in the same manner.

189. 'Departed ancestors, no doubt, are attendant on such invited Brahmens; hovering around them like pure spirits, and sitting by them, when they are seated.

190. 'The priest who having been duly invited to a sraddha, breaks the appointment, commits a grievous offence, and in his next birth becomes a hog.

191. ‘He, who caresses a Sudra woman, after he has been invited to sacred obsequies, takes on himself all the sin that has been committed by the giver of the repast.

192. 'The Pitris or great progenitors, are free from wrath, intent on purity, ever exempt from sensual passions, endued with exalted qualities: they are primeval divinities, who have laid arms aside.

193. 'Hear now completely, from whom they sprang; who they are; by whom and by what ceremonies they are to be honoured.

194. 'The sons of Marichi and of all the other Rishis, who were the offspring of Menu, son of Brahma, are called the companies of Pitris, or forefathers.

195. 'The Somasads, who sprang from Viraj, are declared to be the ancestors of the Sadhyhas; and the Agnishwattas, who are famed among created beings as the children of Marichi, to be the progenitors of the Devas.

196. 'Of the Daityas, the Danavas, the Yacpas, the Gandharvas, the Uragas, or Serpents, the Racshashes, the Garudas, and the Cinnaras, the ancestors are Barhishads descended from Atri;

197. 'Of Brahmens, those named Somapas; of Cshatriyas, the Havishmats; of Vaisyas, those called Abjyapas; of Sudras, the Sucalins:

198. 'The Somapas descended from Me, Bhrigu; the Havishmats, from Angiras; the Ajyapas, from Pulastya; the Sucalins, from Vasisht’ha.

199. 'Those who are, and those who are not, consumable by fire, called Agnidagdhas, and Anagnidagdhas, the Cavyas, the Barhishads, the Agnishwattas, and the Saumyas, let mankind consider as the chief progenitors of Brahmens.

200. 'Of those just enumerated, who are generally reputed the principal tribes of Pitris, the sons and grandsons indefinitely, are also in this world considered as great progenitors.

201. 'From the Rishis come the Pitris, or patriarchs; from the Pitris, both Devas and Danavas; from the Devas, this whole world of animals and vegetables, in due order.

202. 'Mere water, offered with faith to the progenitors of men, in vessels of silver, or adorned with silver, proves the source of incorruption.

203. ‘An oblation by Brahmens to their ancestors transcends an oblation to the deities; because that to the deities is considered as the opening and completion of that to ancestors:

204. 'As a preservative of the oblation to the patriarchs, let the house-keeper begin with an offering to the gods; for the Racshases rend in pieces an oblation which has no such preservative.

205. 'Let an offering to the gods be made at the beginning and end of the sraddha: it must not begin and end with an offering to ancestors; for he who begins and ends it with an oblation to the Pitris, quickly perishes with his progeny.

206. 'Let the Brahmen smear with cow dung a purified and sequestered piece of ground; and let him, with great care, select a place with a declivity toward the south:

207. 'The divine manes are always pleased with an oblation in empty glades, naturally clean, on the banks of rivers, and in solitary spots.

208. 'Having duly made an ablution with water, let him place the invited Brahmens, who have also performed their ablutions, one by one, on allotted seats purified with cusa-grass.

209. 'When he has placed them with reverence on their seats, let him honour them, (having first honoured the Gods) with fragrant garlands and sweet odours.

210. ‘Having brought water for them with cusa-grass and tila, let the Brahmen, with the Brahmens, pour the oblation, as the law directs, on the holy fire.

211. 'First, as it is ordained, having satisfied Agni, Soma and Yama, with clarified butter, let him proceed to satisfy the manes of his progenitors.

212. ‘If he have no consecrated fire, as if he be yet unmarried, or his wife be just deceased, let him drop the oblation into the hand of a Brahmen; since, what fire is, even such is a Brahmen; as priests who know the Veda declare:

213. 'Holy sages call the chief of the twice born the gods of obsequies, free from wrath, with placid aspects, of a primeval race, employed in the advancement of human creatures.

212. 'Having walked in order from east to south, and thrown into the fire all the ingredients of his oblation, let him sprinkle water on the ground with his right hand.

215. 'From the remainder of the clarified butter having formed three balls of rice, let him offer them, with fixed attention, in the same manner as the water, his face being turned to the south:

216. 'Then, having offered those balls, after due ceremonies and with an attentive mind, to the manes of his father, his paternal grandfather, and great grandfather, let him wipe the same hand with the roots of cusa, which he had before used, for the sake of his paternal ancestors in the fourth, fifth, and sixth degrees, who are the partakers of the rice and clarified butter thus wiped off.

217. 'Having made an ablution, returning toward the north, and thrice suppressing his breath slowly, let him salute the Gods of the six seasons, and the Pitris also, being well acquainted with proper texts of the Veda.

218. 'Whatever water remains in his ewer, let him carry back deliberately near the cakes of rice; and with fixed attention, let him smell those cakes, in order as they were offered:

219. 'Then, taking a small portion of the cakes in order, let him first, as the law directs, cause the Brahmens to eat of them, while they are seated.

220. 'If his father be alive, let him offer the sraddha to his ancestors in three higher degrees; or let him cause his own father to eat, as a Brahmen at the obsequies:

221. 'Should his father be dead, and his grandfather living, let him, in celebrating the name of his father, that is, in performing obsequies to him, celebrate also his paternal great grandfather;

222. 'Either the paternal grandfather may partake of the sraddha (so has Menu declared) or the grandson, authorized by him, may perform the ceremony at his discretion.

223. 'Having poured water, with cusa-grass and tila, into the hands of the Brahmens, let him give them the upper part of the cakes, saying, Swadha to the manes!"

224. 'Next, having himself brought with both hands, a vessel full of rice, let him, still meditating on the Pitris, place it before the Brahmens without precipitation.

225. 'Rice taken up, but not supported with both hands, the malevolent Asuras quickly rend in pieces.

226. 'Broths, potherbs, and other eatables accompanying the rice, together with milk and curds, clarified butter and honey, let him first place on the ground, after he has made an ablution; and let his mind be intent on no other object:

227. 'Let him add spiced puddings, and milky messes of various sorts, roots of herbs and ripe fruits, savoury meats and sweet smelling drinks.

228. 'Then being duly purified, and with perfect presence of mind, let him take up all the dishes, one by one, and present them in order to the Brahmens, proclaiming their qualities.

229. 'Let him at no time drop a tear; let him on no account be angry; let him say nothing false; let him not touch the eatables with his foot; let him not even shake the dishes:

220. 'A tear sends the messes to restless ghosts; anger, to foes; falsehood, to dogs; contact with his foot, to demons; agitation, to sinners.

231. 'Whatever is agreeable to the Brahmens, let him give without envy; and let him discourse on the attributes of God: such discourse is expected by the manes.

232. ‘At the obsequies to ancestors, he must let the Brahmens hear passages from the Veda, from the codes of law, from moral tales, from heroick poems, from the Puranas, and from theological texts.

233. ‘Himself being delighted, let him give delight to the Brahmens, and invite them to eat of the provisions by little and little; attracting them often with the dressed rice and other eatables, and mentioning their good properties.

234. 'To the son of his daughter, though a student in theology, let him carefully give food at the sraddha; offering him a blanket from Nepal as his aeat, and sprinkling the ground with tila.

235. 'Three things are held pure at such obsequies, the daughter, son, the Nepal blanket, and the tila; and three things are praised in it by the wise, cleanliness, freedom from wrath, and want of precipitate haste.

236. 'Let all the dressed food be very hot; and let the Brahmens eat it in silence; nor let them declare the qualities of the food, even though asked by the giver.

237. 'As long as the messes continue warm, as long as they eat in silence, as long as the qualities of the food are not declared by them, so long the manes feast on it.
238. 'What a Brahmen eats with his head covered, what he eats with his face to the south, what he eats with sandals on his feet, the demons assuredly devour.

239. 'Let not a Chandala, a town boar, a cock, a dog, a woman in her courses, or an eunuch, see the Brahmens eating:

240. 'That which any one of them sees at the oblation to fire, at a solemn donation of cows and gold, at a repast given to Brahmens, at holy rites to the gods, and at the obsequies to ancestors, produces not the intended fruit:

241. ‘The boar destroys it by his smell; the cock, by the air of his wings; the dog, by the cast of a look; the man of the lowest class, by the touch.

242. 'If a lame man, or a man with one eye, or a man with a limb defective or redundant, be even a servant of the giver, him also let his master remove from the place.

244. 'Should another Brahmen, or a mendicant, come to his house for food, let him, having obtained permission from the invited Brahmens, entertain the stranger to the best of his power.

244. 'Having brought together all the sorts of food, as dressed rice and the like, and Sprinkling them with water, let him place them before the Brahmens, who have eaten; dropping some on the blades of cusa-grass, which have been spread on the ground.

245. 'What remains in the dishes, and what has been dropped on the blades of cusa, must be considered as the portion of deceased Brahmens, not girt with the sacrificial thread, and of such as have deserted unreasonably the women of their own tribe.

246. 'The residue, that has fallen on the ground at the sraddha to the manes, the wise have decided to be the share of all the Servants, who are not crooked in their ways, nor lazy and ill disposed.

247. ‘Before the obsequies to ancestors as far as the sixth degree, they must be performed to a Brahmen recently deceased; but the performer of them must, in that case, give the sraddha without the ceremony to the gods, and offer only one round cake; and these obsequies for a single ancestor should be annually performed on the day of his death:

248. ‘When, afterwards, the obsequies to ancestors as far as the sixth degree, inclusively of him, are performed according to law, then must the offering of cakes be made by the defendants in the manner before ordained for the monthly ceremonies.

249. 'That fool, who, having eaten of the sraddha, gives the residue of it to a man of the servile class, falls headlong down to the hell named Calasutra.

250. ‘Should the eater of a sraddha enter, on the same day, the bed of a seducing woman, his ancestors would sleep for that month on her excrement.

251. 'Having, by the word swaditam, asked the Brahmens if they have eaten well, let him give them, being satisfied, water for an ablution, and courteously say to them, "Rest either at home or here.”

252. 'Then let the Brahmens address him, saying swadha; for in all ceremonies relating to deceased ancestors, the word swadha is the highest benison.

253. ‘After that, let him inform those, who have eaten of the food that remains; and being instructed by the Brahmens, let him dispose of it as they may direct.

254. 'At the clole of the sraddha to his ancestors, he must ask if the Brahmens are satisfied, by the word swadita after that for his family by the word susruta; after that for his own advancement, by the word sampanna, after that which has been offered to the gods, by the word ruchita.

255. ‘The afternoon, the cusa-grass, the cleansing of the ground, the tilas, the liberal gifts of food, the due preparation for the repast and the company of most exalted Brahmens, are true riches in the obsequies to ancestors.

256. 'The blades of cusa, the holy texts, the forenoon, all the oblations, which will presently be enumerated, and the purification before mentioned, are to be considered as wealth in the sraddha to the gods:

257. ‘Such wild grains as are eaten by hermits, milk, the juice of the moonplant, meat untainted, and salt unprepared by art, are held things fit, in their own nature, for the last mentioned offering.

258. ‘Having dismissed the invited brahmens, keeping his mind attentive, and his speech suppressed, let him, after an ablution, look toward the south, and ask these blessings of the Pitris:

259. "May generous givers abound in our house! may the scriptures be studied, and progeny increase in it! may faith never depart from us! and may we have much to bestow on the needy!"

260. 'Thus having ended the sraddha, let him cause a cow, a priest, a kid, or the fire, to devour what remains of the cakes; or let him cast them into the waters.

261. ‘Some make the offering of the round cakes after the repast of the Brahmens; some cause the birds to eat what remains, or cast it into water or fire.

262. ‘Let a lawful wife, ever dutiful to her lord, and constantly honouring his ancestors, eat the middlemost of the three cakes, or that offered to his paternal grandfather, with due ceremonies, praying for offspring:

263. 'So may she bring forth a son, who will be long lived, famed, and strong minded, wealthy, having numerous descendants, endued with the best of qualities, and performing all duties religious and civil.

26 4. 'Then, having washed both his hands and sipped water, let him prepare some rice for his paternal kinsmen; 2nd, having given it them with due reverence, let him prepare food also for his maternal relations.

265. 'Let the residue continue in its place, until the Brahmens have been dismissed; and then let him perform the remaining domestick sacraments.

266. 'What sort of oblations, given duly to the manes, are capable of satisfying them, for a long time or for eternity, I will now declare without omission.

267. 'The ancestors of men are satisfied a whole month with tila, rice, barley, black lentils or vetches, water, roots, and fruit, given with prescribed ceremonies;

268. 'Two months, with fish; three months, with venison; four, with mutton; five, with the flesh of such birds, as the twice born may eat:

269. 'Six months, with the flesh of kids; seven, with that of spotted deer; eight, with that of the deer, or antelope, called ena; nine, with that of the ruru:

270. 'Ten months are they satisfied with the flesh of wild boars and wild buffalos; eleven, with that of rabbits or hares, and of tortoises;

271. 'A whole year with the milk of cows, and food made of that milk; from the flesh of the long eared white goat, their satisfaction endures twelve years.

272. 'The potherb calasaca, the fish mahasalca, or the diodon, the flesh of a rhinoceros, or of an iron-coloured kid, honey, and all such forest grains as are eaten by hermits, are formed for their satisfaction without end.

273. 'Whatever pure food, mixed with honey, a man offers on the thirteenth day of the moon, in the season of rain, and under the lunar asterism Magha, has likewise a ceaseless duration.

274. "Oh! may that man, say the manes, be born in our line, who may give us milky food, with honey and pure butter, both on the thirteenth of the moon, and when the shadow of an elephant falls to the east!"

275. 'Whatever a man, endued with strong faith, piously offers, as the law has directed, becomes a perpetual unperishable gratification to his ancestors in the other world:

276. 'The tenth and so forth, except the fourteenth, in the dark half of the month, are the lunar days mod approved for sacred obsequies: as they are, so are not the others.

277. 'He, who does honour to the manes, on even lunar days, and under even lunar stations, enjoys all his desires; on odd lunar days, and under odd lunar asterisms, he procures an illustrious race.

278. 'As the latter or dark half of the month surpasses, for the celebration of obsequies, the former, or bright half, so the latter half of the day surpasses, for the same purpose, the former half of it.

279; 'The oblation to ancestors must be duly made, even to the conclusion of it with the distribution to the servants, (or even to the close of life,) in the form prescribed, by a Brahmen wearing his thread on his right shoulder, proceeding from left to right, without remissness, and with cusa-grass in his hand.

280. 'Obsequies must not be performed by night; since the night is called racshasi or infested by demons; nor while the sun is rising or setting, nor when it has just risen.

281. 'A house-keeper, unable to give a monthly repast, may perform obsequies here below, according to the sacred ordinance, only thrice a year, in the seasons of hemanta, grishma, and versha; but the five sacraments he must perform daily.

282. 'The sacrificial oblation at obsequies to ancestors, is ordained to be made in no vulgar fire; nor should the monthly sraddha of that Brahmen, who keeps a perpetual fire, be made on any day, except on that of the conjunction.

283. 'When a twice born man, having performed his ablution, offers a satisfaction to the manes with water only, being unable to give a repast, he gains by that offering all the fruit of a sraddha.

284. 'The wise call our fathers, Vasus; our paternal grandfathers, Rudras; our paternal great grandfathers, Adityas; (that is all are to be revered as deities,) and to this effect there is a primeval text in the Veda.

285. 'Let a man, who is able, continually feed on vighasa, and continually feed on amrita; by vighasa is meant the residue of a repast at obsequies; and by amrita, the residue of a sacrifice to the gods.

286. 'This complete system of rules, for the five sacraments and the like, has been declared to you: now hear the law for those means of subsistence, which the chief of the twice born may seek.  
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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:59 am

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Posts: 33189
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:59 am

Part 1 of 3


On Judicature; and on Law, Private and Criminal

1. 'A king, desirous of inspecting judicial proceedings mud enter his court of justice, composed and sedate in his demeanour, together with Brahmens and counsellors, who know how to give him advice:

2. 'There, either sitting or standing, holding forth his right arm, without ostentation in his dress and ornaments, let him examine the affairs of litigant parties.

3. 'Each day let him decide causes one after another, under the eighteen principal titles of law, by arguments and rules drawn from local usages, and from written codes:

4. 'Of those titles, the first is debt, on loans for consumption; the second, deposits, and loans for use; the third, sale without ownership; the fourth, concerns among partners; the fifth, subtraction of what has been given;

5. 'The sixth, non-payment of wages or hire; the seventh, non performance of agreement; the eighth, rescission of sale and purchase; the ninth, disputes between master and servant;

6. 'The tenth, contests on boundaries; the eleventh and twelfth, assault and slander; the thirteenth, larceny; the fourteenth, robbery and other violence; the fifteenth, adultery;

7. ‘The fifteenth, altercation between man and 4 wife, and their several duties; the seventeenth, the law of inheritance; the eighteenth, gaming with dice and with living creatures: these eighteen titles of law are settled as the ground work of all judicial procedure in this world.

8. 'Among men, who contend for the most part on the titles just mentioned, and on a few miscellaneous heads not comprised under them, let the king decide causes justly, observing primeval law;

9. 'But when he cannot inspect such affairs in person, let him appoint, for the inspection of them, a Brahmen of eminent learning;

10. 'Let that chief judge, accompanied by three assessors, fully consider all causes brought before the king; and, having entered the court room, let him sit or stand, but not move backwards and forwards.

11. 'In whatever country three Brahmens, particularly skilled in the three several Vedas, sit together with the very learned Brahmen appointed by the king, the wise call that assembly the court of Brahma with four faces.

12. 'WHEN justice, having been wounded by iniquity, approaches the court, and the judges extract not the dart, they also shall be wounded by it.

13. 'Either the court must not be entered by judges, parties, and witnesses, or law and truth must be openly declared: that man is criminal, who either says nothing, or says what is false or unjust.

14. ;Where justice is destroyed by iniquity, and truth by false evidence, the judges, who safely look on, without giving redress, shall also be destroyed.

15. 'Justice being destroyed, will destroy; being preserved, will preserve: it must never therefore be violated. “Beware, O judge, lest justice being overturned, overturn both us and thyself.”

16. 'The divine form of justice is represented as Vrisha, or a bull, and the gods consider him, who violates justice, as a Vrishala, or one who slays a bull: let the king, therefore, and his judges beware of violating justice.

17. 'The only firm friend, who follows men even after death, is justice; all others are extinct with the body.

18. 'Of injustice in decisions, one quarter falls on the party in the cause; one quarter, on his witnesses; one quarter, on all the judges; and one quarter on the king;

19. ‘But where he, who deserves condemnation shall be condemned, the king is guiltless, and the judges free from blame: an evil deed shall recoil on him who committed it.

20. 'A Brahmen supported only by his class, and one barely reputed a Brahmen, but without performing any sacerdotal acts, may, at the king's pleasure, interpret the law to him: so may the two middle classes; but a Sudra, in no case whatever.

21. 'Of that king, who stupidly looks on, while a Sudra decides causes, the kingdom itself shall be embarrassed, like a cow in deep mire.

22. 'The whole territory, which is inhabited by a number of Sudras, overwhelmed with atheists, and deprived of Brahmens, must speedily perish, assisted with death and disease.

23. 'Let the king or his judge, having seated himself on the bench, his body properly clothed, and his mind attentively fixed, begin with doing reverence to the deities, who guard the world; and then let him enter on the trial of causes:

24. 'Understanding what is expedient or inexpedient, but considering only what is law or not law, let him examine all disputes between parties, in the order of their several classes.

25. 'By external signs let him see through the thoughts of men; by their voice, colour, countenance, limbs, eyes, and action:

26. 'From the limbs, the look, the motion of the body, the gesticulation, the speech, the changes of the eye and the face, are discovered the internal workings of the mind.

27. 'The property of a student and of an infant, whether by descent or otherwise, let the king hold in his custody, until the owner shall have ended his studentship, or until his infancy shall have ceased in his sixteenth year.

28. 'Equal care must be taken of barren women, of women without sons, whose husbands have married other wives, of women without kindred, or whose husbands are in distant places, of widows true to their lords, and of women afflicted with illness.

29. 'Such kinsmen, as by any pretence, appropriate the fortunes of women during their lives, a just king must punish with the severity due to thieves.

30. 'Three years let the king detain the property of which no owner appears, after a distinct proclamation: the owner appearing within the three years, may take it; but, after that term, the king may confiscate it.

31. 'He, who says "This is mine,” must be duly examined; and if, before he inspect it, he declare its form, number, and other circumstances, the owner must have his property;

32. 'But if he show not at what place and time it was lost, and specify not its colour, shape, and dimensions, he ought to be amerced;

33. 'The king may take a sixth part of the property so detained by him, or a tenth, or a twelfth, remembering the duty of good kings.

34. 'Property lost by one man, and found by another, let the king secure, by committing it to the care of trust-worthy men; and those, whom he shall convict of stealing it, let him cause to be trampled on by an elephant.

35. 'From the man who shall say with truth, "This property, which has been kept, belongs to me,” the king may take a sixth or twelfth part, for having secured it;

36. 'But he who shall say so falsely, may be fined either an eighth part of his own property, or else in some small proportion, to the value of the goods falsely claimed, a just calculation having been made.

37. 'A learned Brahmen, having found a treasure formerly hidden, may take it without any deduction; since he is the lord of all;

38. 'But of a treasure anciently reposited under ground, which any other subject or the king has discovered, the king may lay up half in his treasury, having given half to the Brahmens.

39. 'Of old hoards, and precious minerals in the earth, the king is entitled to half by reason of his general protection, and because he is the lord paramount of the soil.

40. ‘To men of all classes, the king must restore their property, which robbers have seized; since a king, who takes it for himself, incurs the guilt of a robber.

41. ‘A king who knows the revealed law, must enquire into the particular laws of classes, the laws or usages of districts, the customs of traders, and the rules of certain families, and establish their peculiar laws, if they be not repugnant to the law of God;

42. ‘Since all men, who mind their own customary ways of proceeding, and are fixed in the discharge of their several duties, become united by affection with the people at large, even though they dwell far asunder.

43. 'Neither the king himself, nor his officers must ever promote litigation; nor ever neglect a law suit instituted by others.

44. ‘As a hunter traces the lair of a wounded beast by the drops of blood; thus let a king investigate the true point of justice by deliberate arguments:

43. 'Let him fully consider the nature of truth, the date of the case, and his own person; and next, the witnesses, the place, the mode, and the time; firmly adhering to all the rules of practice:

46. ‘What has been practised by good men and by virtuous Brahmens, if it be not inconsistent with the legal customs of provinces or districts, of classes and families, let him establish.

47. 'When a creditor sues before him for the recovery of his right from a debtor, let him cause the debtor to pay what the creditor shall prove due.  

48. ‘By whatever lawful means a creditor may have gotten possession of his own property, let the king ratify such payment by the debtor, though obtained even by compulsory means;

49. 'By the mediation of friends, by suit in court, by artful management, or by distress, a creditor may recover the property lent; and fifthly, by legal force.

50. 'That creditor, who recovers his right from his debtor, must not be rebuked by the king for retaking his own property.

51. 'In a suit for a debt, which the defendant denies, let him award payment to the creditor of what, by good evidence, he shall prove due, and exact a small fine, according to the circumstances of the debtor.

52. ‘On the denial of a debt, which the defendant has in court been required to pay, the plaintiff must call a witness who was present at the place of the loan, or produce other evidence, as a note and the like.

53. ‘The plaintiff, who calls a witness not present at the place where the contract was made, or, having knowingly called him, disclaims him as his witness; or who perceives not, that he asserts confused and contradictory facts;

54. 'Or who, having stated what he designs to prove, varies afterwards from his case; or who, being questioned on a fact which he had before admitted, refuses to acknowledge that very fact;  

55. 'Or who has conversed with the witnesses in a place unfit for such conversation; or who declines answering a question properly put; or who departs from the court;

56. 'Or who, being ordered to speak, stands mute; or who proves not what he has alleged; or who knows not what is capable or incapable of proof; such a plaintiff shall fail in that suit.

57. 'Him who has said “I have witnesses,” and being told to produce them, produces them not, the judge must on this account declare nonsuited.

58. ‘If the plaintiff delay to put in his plaint, he may, according to the nature of the case, be corporally punished or justly amerced; and if the defendant plead not within three fortnights, he is by law condemned.

59. 'In the double of that sum, which the defendant falsely denies, or on which the complainant falsely declares, shall those two men, wilfully offending against justice, be fined by the king.

60. 'When a man has been brought into court by a suitor for property, and, being called on to answer, denies the debt, the cause should be decided by the Brahmen who represents the king, having heard three witnesses at least.

61. 'What sort of witnesses must be produced by creditors and others on the trial of causes, I will comprehensively declare; and in what manner those witnesses must give true evidence.

62. 'Married house-keepers, men with male issue, inhabitants of the same district, either of the military, the commercial, or the servile class, are competent, when called by the party, to give their evidence; not any persons indiscriminately, except in such cases of urgency as will soon be mentioned.

63. ‘Just and sensible men of all the four classes may be witnesses on trials; men, who know their whole duty, and are free from covetousness; but men of an opposite character the judge must reject.

64. ‘Those must not be admitted who have a pecuniary interest; nor familiar friends; nor menial servants; nor enemies; nor men formerly perjured; nor persons grievously diseased; nor those who have committed heinous offences.

65. ‘The king cannot be made a witness; nor cooks and the like mean artificers; nor public dancers nor singers; nor a priest of deep learning in scripture; nor a student in theology; nor an anchoret secluded from all worldly connexions;

66. ‘Nor one wholly dependent; nor one of bad fame; nor one who follows a cruel occupation; nor one who acts openly against the law; nor a decrepit old man; nor a child; nor one man only, unless he be distinguished for virtue; nor a wretch of the lowest mixed class; nor one who has lost the organs of sense;

67. 'Nor one extremely grieved; nor one intoxicated; nor a madman; nor one tormented with hunger or thirst; nor one oppressed by fatigue; nor one excited by lust; nor one inflamed by wrath; nor one who has been convicted of theft.

68. 'Women should regularly be witnesses for women; twice born men, for men alike twice born; good servants and mechanicks, for servants and mechanicks; and those of the lowest race, for those of the lowest;

69. 'But any person whatever, who has positive knowledge of transactions in the private apartments of a house, or in a forest, or at a time of death, may give evidence between the parties:

70. ‘On failure of witnesses duly qualified, evidence may, in such cases, be given by a woman, by a child, or by an aged man, by a pupil, by a kinsman, by a slave, or by a hired servant;

71. 'Yet of children, of old men, and of the diseased, who are all apt to speak untruly, the judge must consider the testimony as weak; and much more, that of men with disordered minds:

72. ‘In all cases of violence, of theft and adultery, of defamation and assault, he must not examine too strictly the competence of witnesses.

73. 'If there be contradictory evidence, let the king decide by the plurality of credible witnesses; if equality in number, by superiority in virtue; if parity in virtue, by the testimony of such twice born men as have best performed publick duties.

74. ‘Evidence of what has been seen, or of what has been heard, as slander and the like, given by those who saw or heard it, is admissable; and a witness who speaks truth in those cases, neither deviates from virtue nor loses his wealth;

75. ‘But a witness, who knowingly says any thing, before an assembly of good men, different from what he had seen or heard, shall fall headlong, after death, into a region of horrour, and be debarred from heaven.

76. ‘When a man sees or hears any thing, without being then called upon to attest it, yet if he be afterwards examined as a witness, he must declare it, exactly as it was seen, and as it was heard.

77. ‘One man, untainted with covetousness and other vices, may in some cases be the sole witness, and will have more weight than many women, because female understandings are apt to waver; or than many other men who have been tarnished with crimes.

78. 'What witnesses declare naturally or without bias, must be received on trials; but what they improperly say, from some unnatural bent, is inapplicable to the purposes of justice.

79. ‘The witnesses being assembled in the middle of the court-room, in the presence of the plaintiff and the defendant, let the judge examine them, after having addressed them all together in the following manner:

80. “What ye know to have been transacted in the matter before us, between the parties reciprocally, declare at large and with truth; for your evidence in this cause is required.”

81. 'A witness, who gives testimony with truth, shall attain exalted seats of beatitude above, and the highest same here below: such testimony is revered by Brahma himself;

82. ‘The witness who speaks falsely, shall be fast bound, under water, in the snaky cords of Varuna, and be wholly deprived of power to escape torment, during a hundred transmigrations: let mankind, therefore, give no false testimony.

83. 'By truth is a witness cleared of sin; by truth is justice advanced: truth must, therefore, be spoken by witnesses of every class.

84. ‘The soul itself is its own witness; the soul itself is its own refuge; offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of men!

83. The sinful have said in their hearts: "None sees us,” Yes; the gods distinctly see them; and so does the spirit within their breasts.

86. 'The guardian deities of the firmament, of the earth, of the waters, of the human heart, of the moon, of the sun, and of fire, of punishment after death, of the winds, of night, of both twilights, and of justice, perfectly know the state of all spirits clothed with bodies.

87. 'In the forenoon let the the judge, being purified, severally call on the twice born, being purified also, to declare the truth, in the presence of some image, a symbol of the divinity, and of Brahmens, while the witnesses turn their faces either to the north or to the east.

88. 'To a Brahmen he must begin with saying, “Declare;" to a Cshatriya, with saying “Declare the truth;" to a Vaisya, with comparing perjury to the crime of stealing kine, grain, or gold; to a Sudra, with comparing it in some or all of the following sentences, to every crime that men can commit.

SECT. IX. Of the Modes of Examining Witnesses.

He who means to question a Witness, having bathed himself, shall put his Questions in the Tenth Ghurrie of the Day: The Witness also, having bathed himself, and turned his Face towards the Eastern or Northern Quarter, shall deliver his Evidence: The Examiner shall ask the Witness (if a Bramin) with Civility and Respect, saying, "Explain to me what Knowledge you have of this Affair;" and to a Chehteree he shall say, "What do you know of this Affair? speak the Truth;" and to a Bice he shall say, "What do you know of this Affair? if you give false Evidence, whatever Crime there is in dealing Kine, or Gold, or Paddee, or Wheat, or Gram, or Barley, or Milliard, and such Kind of Grain, shall be accounted to you;" and to a Sooder he shall say, "What do you know of this Affair? speak; if your Evidence is false, whatever Crime is the greatest in the World, that Crime shall be accounted to you."

-- A Code of Gentoo Laws, Or, Ordinations of the Pundits, From a Persian Translation, Made From the Original, Written in the Shanscrit Language, by Nathaniel Brassey Halhed

89. “Whatever places of torture have been prepared for the slayer of a priest, for the murderer of a woman or of a child, for the injurer of a friend, and for an ungrateful man, those places are ordained for a witness who gives false evidence.

90. '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.

91. “O friend to virtue, that Supreme Spirit, which thou believed one and the same with thyself, resides in thy bosom perpetually, and is an all knowing inspector of thy goodness or of thy wickedness.

92. “If thou beest not at variance, by speaking falsely, with Yama, or the subduer of all; with Vaivaswata, or the punisher; with that great divinity who dwells in thy breast, go not on a pilgrimage to the river Ganga, nor to the plains of Curu, for thou hast no need of expiation.

93. “Naked and shorn, tormented with hunger  and thirst, and deprived of light, shall the man who gives false evidence, go with a potsherd to beg food at the door of his enemy.

94. “Headlong, in utter darkness, shall the impious wretch tumble into hell, who, being interrogated m a judicial inquiry, answers one question falsely.

95. “He, who in a court of justice gives an imperfect account of any transaction, or asserts a fact of which he was no eye-witness, shall receive pain instead of pleasure, and resemble a man, who eats fish with eagerness and swallows the sharp bones.

96. “The gods are acquainted with no better mortal in this world, than the man, of whom the intelligent spirit, which pervades his body, has no distrust, when he prepares to give fevidence.

97. “Hear, honest man, from a just enumeration in order, how many kinsmen, in evidence of different sorts, a false witness kills or incurs the guilt of killing:

98. 'He kills five by false testimony concerning cattle in general; he kills ten by false testimony concerning kine; he kills a hundred by false evidence concerning horses; and a thousand by false evidence concerning the human race:

99. 'By speaking falsely in a cause concerning gold, be kills the born and the unborn; by speaking falsely concerning land, he kills every thing animated: beware then of speaking falsely in a cause concerning land!

And the Crime of false Witness is the same as if a Man had murdered a Bramin, or had deprived a Woman of Life, or had assassinated his Friend; or of One, who, in return for Good, gives Evil; or who, having learned a Science or Profession, gives his Tutor no Reward; or of a Woman, who, having neither Son, nor Grandson, nor Grandson's Son, after her Husband's Death, celebrates not the Seradeh to his Memory; or of a Son, who celebrates not the Seradeh for his Father and Mother; or of him, who, having received a Kindness, is always mentioning the Faults of his Benefactor, and conceals the Benefit received; or of him, who forsakes any One of the Four Isrum, or Modes of Life: (The Four Isrum are a Berhemcharry, a Sinassee, a Ban Perust, and a Householder; of these the Berhemcharry, the Sinnassee, and the Ban Perust, have already been explained in the Chapter of Daye Bhag, and a Householder is he who hath a Wife, a Son, a Brother, and Grandson; or, if he hath not these, who nevertheless keeps a House.) Whatever Crime is incurred in such Actions as above-mentioned, the same Crime is incurred by giving false Witness.

In an Affair concerning Kine, if any Person gives false Evidence, whatever Guilt is incurred by the Murder of Ten Persons, he becomes obnoxious to the Punishment due to such a Crime, besides the Guilt already explained.

In an Affair concerning a Horse, if any Person gives false Evidence, Guilt is as great as the Guilt of murdering One Hundred Persons.

Besides Kine and Horses, in an Affair concerning any other Animal that hath Hair upon its Tail, if any Person gives false Evidence, whatever Guilt is incurred by the Murder of Five Persons, that Guilt shall be imputed to him.

In an Affair, concerning a Man, if any Person gives false Evidence, whatever Guilt is incurred by the Murder of One Thousand Persons, he becomes amenable to the Punishment of such Guilt.

In an Affair concerning Gold, if any Person gives false Evidence, whatever Guilt would be incurred in murdering all the Men who have been born, or who shall be born in the World, shall be imputed to him.

In an Affair concerning Land, if any Person gives false Evidence, whatever Guilt would be incurred by the Murder of all living Creatures in the World, he shall be liable to the Punishment due to such Guilt.


100. 'The sages have held false evidence concerning water, and the possession or enjoyment of women, equal to false evidence concerning land; and it is equally criminal in causes concerning pearls and other precious things formed in water, and concerning all things made of stone.

101. 'Marking well all the murders which are comprehended in the crime of perjury, declare thou the whole truth with precision, as it was heard, and as it was seen by thee.” [/b]

102. 'Brahmens who tend herds of cattle, who trade, who practise mechanical arts, who profess dancing and singing, who are hired servants or usurers, let the judge exhort and examine as if they were Sudras.

103. 'In some cases, a giver of false evidence from a pious motive, even though he know the truth, shall not lose a seat in heaven; such evidence wise men call the speech of the gods.

104. 'Whenever the death of a man, who had not been a grievous offender, either of the servile, the commercial, the military, or the sacerdotal class, would be occasioned by true evidence, from the known rigour of the king, even though the fault arose from inadvertence or errour, falsehood may be spoken: it is even preferable to truth.

Wherever a true Evidence would deprive a Man of his Life, in that Case, if a false Testimony would be the Preservation of his Life, it is allowable to give such false Testimony; and for Ablution of the Guilt of false Witness, he shall perform the Poojeeh Sereshtee; but to him who has murdered a Bramin, or slain a Cow, or who, being of the Bramin Tribe, has drunken Wine, or has committed any of these particularly flagrant Offences, it is not allowed to give false Witness in Preservation of his Life.


105. 'Such witnesses must offer, as oblations to Saraswati, cakes of rice and milk addressed to the goddess of speech; and thus will they fully expiate that venial sin of benevolent falsehood:

106. 'Or such a witness may pour clarified butter into the holy fire, according to the sacred rule, hallowing it with the texts called cushmanda, or with those which relate to Varuna, beginning with ud; or with the three texts appropriated to the water gods.

107. ‘A man who labours not under illness, yet comes not to give evidence in cases of loans and the like, within three fortnights after due summons, shall take upon himself the whole debt, and pay a tenth part of it as a fine to the king.

108. 'The witness, who has given evidence, and to whom, within seven days after, a misfortune happens from disease, fire, or the death of a kinsman, shall be condemned to pay the debt and a fine.

109. ‘In cases, where no witness can be had, between two parties opposing each other, the judge may acquire a knowledge of the truth, by the oath of the parties; or if he cannot otherwise perfectly ascertain it.

110. 'By the seven great Rishis, and by the deities themselves, have oaths been taken, for the purpose of judicial proof; and even Vasisht’ha, being accused by Viswamitra of murder, took an oath before the king Sudaman, son of PlYAVANA.

111. ‘Let no man of sense take an oath in vain, that is, not in a court of justice, on a trifling occasion; for the man, who takes an oath in vain, shall be punished in this life and in the next:

112. [b]‘To women, however, at a time of dalliance, or on a proposal of marriage, in the case of grass or fruit eaten by a cow, of wood taken for a sacrifice, or of a promise made for the preservation of a Brahmen, it is no deadly sin to take a light oath.

113. 'Let the judge cause a priest to swear by his veracity; a soldier by his horse or elephant, and his weapons; a merchant by his kine, grain, and gold; a mechanick, or servile man, by imprecating on his own head, if he speak falsely, all possible crimes;

114. 'Or, on great occasions, let him cause the party to hold fire, or to dive under water, or severally to touch the heads of his children and wife:

115. 'He, whom the blazing fire burns not, whom the water soon forces not up, or meets with no speedy misfortune, must be held veracious in his testimony on oath.

116. ‘Of the sage Vasta, whom his younger half brother formerly attacked, as the son of a fertile woman, the fire, which pervades the world, burned not even a hair, by reason of his perfect veracity.

In a Case where there are many Witnesses, if, at the Time of Examination, most of them give their Evidence for One Person, and One or Two of them depose in Favour of the other Party, the Evidence of the Majority is approved; if of the whole Number of Witnesses Half depose for One Side, and Half for the other, then the Evidence of any One of the Witnesses who is a Man of Science shall be credited; if they are all Men of Science, the Evidence of him among them who is the farthert advanced in Knowledge is approved; if the Knowledge of all of them is equal, the Testimony of him among them who regulates his whole Conduct by the Beids is approved; if they all regulate their Conduct by the Beids, and the Evidence of such Men is contradictory, then such a Suit as this cannot be decided by the Testimony of Witnesses; but the Purrikeh [Parikyah] must be performed.


117. 'Whenever false evidence has been given in any suit, the king must reverse the judgement; and whatever has been done, must be considered as undone.

118. 'Evidence, given from covetousness, from distraction of mind, from terrour, from friendship, from lust, from wrath, from ignorance, and from inattention, must be held invalid.

119. ‘The distinctions of punishment for a false witness, from either of those motives, I will propound fully and in order.

120. If he speak falsely through covetousness, he shall be fined a thousand panas; if through distraction of mind, two hundred and fifty, or the lowest amercements; if through terrour, two mean amercements; if through friendship, four times the lowest;
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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Sat Jul 24, 2021 7:00 am

Part 2 of 3

121. 'If through lust, ten times the lowest amercement; if through wrath, three times the next or middlemost; if through ignorance, two hundred complete; if through inattention, a hundred only.

122. 'Learned men have specified these punishments, which were ordained by sage legislators for perjured witnesses, with a view to prevent a failure of justice and to restrain iniquity.

123. 'Let a just prince banish men of the three lower classes, if they give false evidence, having first levied the fine; but a Brahmen let him only banish.

124. 'Menu, son of the Self-existent, has named ten places of punishment, which are appropriated to the three lower classes; but a Brahmen must depart from the realm unhurt in any one of them:

125. 'The part of generation, the belly, the tongue, the two hands, and fifthly, the two feet, the eye, the nose, both ears, the property, and, in a capital case, the whole body.

126. 'Let the king, having considered and ascertained the frequency of a similar offence, the place and time, the ability of the criminal to pay or suffer, and the crime itself, cause punishment to fall on those alone who deserve it.

127. 'Unjust punishment destroys reputation during life, and same after death; it even obstructs, in the next life, the path to heaven: unjust punishment, therefore, let the king by all means avoid.

128. 'A king who inflicts punishment on such as deserve it not, and inflicts no punishment on such as deserve it, brings infamy on himself, while he lives, and shall sink, when he dies, to a region of torment.

129. 'First, let him punish by gentle admonition; afterwards, by harsh reproof; thirdly, by deprivation of property; after that, by corporal pain:

130. 'But, when even by corporal punishment he cannot restrain such offenders, let him apply to them all the four modes with rigour.

131. 'Those names of copper, silver, and gold weights, which are commonly used among men, for the purpose of worldly business, I will now comprehensively explain.

132. 'The very small mote, which may be discerned in a sun-beam passing through a lattice, is the least visible quantity, and men call it a trasarium [?]:

133. 'Eight of those trasariums [?] are supposed equal in weight to one minute poppy-seed; three of those seeds are equal to one black mustard-seed; and three of those least, to a white mustard-seed:

134. 'Six white mustard-seeds are equal to a middle sized barley-corn; three such barley-corns to one ractica, or seed of the Gunja; five racticas of gold are one masha, and sixteen such mashas one suverna:

135. Four suvernas make a pala; ten palas a dharana; but two racticas of silver weighed together, are considered as one mushaca;

136. 'Sixteen of those mushacas are a silver dharana, or purana; but a carsha, or eighty racticas of copper, is called a pana or carshapana.

137. ‘Ten dharanas of silver are known by the name of a fatemana; and the weight of four suvernas has also the appellation of a nishaca (?).

138. 'Now two hundred and fifty panas are declared to be the first or lowest amercement; five hundred of them are considered as the mean; and a thousand as the highest.

139. 'A Debt being admitted by the defendant, he must pay five in the hundred, as a fine to the king; but, if it be denied and proven, twice as much: this law was enacted by Menu.

140. 'A lender of money may take, in addition to his capital, the interest allowed by Vasisht'ha, that is, an eightieth part of a hundred, or one and a charter by the month, if he have a pledge;

141. Or, if he have no pledge, he may take two in the hundred by the month, remembering the duty of good men: for, by thus taking two in the hundred, he becomes not a sinner for gain.

142. 'He may thus take, in proportion to the risk, and in the direct order of the classes, two in the hundred from a priest, three from a soldier, four from a merchant; and five from a mechanick or servile man, but never more, as interest by the month.

143. 'If he take a beneficial pledge, or a pledge to be used for his profit, he must have no other interest on the loan; nor, after a great length of time, or when the profits have amounted to the 4debt, can he give or sell such a pledge, though he may assign it in pledge to another.

144 'A pledge to be kept only must not be used by force, that is, against consent: the pawner so using it must give up his whole interest, or must satisfy the pawner, if it be spoiled or worn out, by paying him the original price of it; otherwise, he commits a theft of the pawn.

145. 'Neither a pledge without limit, nor a deposit, are lost to the owner by lapse of time: they are both recoverable, though they have long remained with the bailee.

146. 'A milch cow, a camel, a riding horse, a bull, or other beast which has been sent to be tamed for labour, and other things used with friendly assent, are not lost, by length of time, to the owner.

147. 'In general, whatever chattel the owner sees enjoyed by others for ten years, while, though present, he says nothing, that chattel he shall not recover:

148. 'If he be neither an idiot, nor an infant under the full age of fifteen years, and if the chattel be adversely possessed in a place where he may see it, his property in it is extinct by law, and the adverse possessor shall keep it.

149. 'A pledge, a boundary of land, the property of an infant, a deposit either open or in a chest sealed, female slaves, the wealth of a king, and of a learned Brahmen, are not lost in consequence of adverse enjoyment.

150. ‘The fool, who secretly uses a pledge without, though not against the assent of the owner, shall give up half of his interest, as a compensation for such use.

151. 'Interest on money received at once, not month by month, or day by day, as it ought, must never be more than enough to double the debt, that is, more than the amount of the principal paid at the same time: on grain, on fruit, on wool or hair, on beasts of burden, lent to be paid in the same kind of equal value, it must not be more than enough to make the debt quintuple.

152. 'Stipulated interest beyond the legal rate, and different from the preceding rule, is invalid; and the wise call it an usurous way of lending: the lender is entitled, at most, to five in the hundred.

153. 'Let no lender for a month, or for two or three months at a certain interest, receive such interest beyond the year; nor any interest, which is unapproved; nor interest upon interest by previous agreement; nor monthly interest exceeding in time the amount of the principal; nor interest exacted from a debtor, as the price of the risk, when there is no publick danger or distress; nor immoderate profits from a pledge to be used by way of interest.

154. 'He, who cannot pay the debt at the fixed time, and wishes to renew the contract, may renew it in writing, with the creditor's assent, if he pay all the interest then due;

155. ‘But if by some unavoidable accident, he cannot pay the whole interest, he may insert, as principal in the renewed contract, so much of the interest accrued as he ought to pay.

156. 'A lender at interest on the risk of safe carriage, who has agreed on the place and time, shall not receive such interest, if by accident the goods are not carried to the place, or within the time:

157. 'Whatever interest or price of the risk shall be settled between the parties, by men well acquainted with sea voyages or journeys by land, with times and with places, such interest shall have legal force.

158. 'The man who becomes surety for the appearance of a debtor in this world, and produces him not, shall pay the debt out of his own property;

159. 'But money due by a surety, or idly promised to musicians and actresses, or lost at play, or due for spirituous liquors, or what remains unpaid of a fine or toll, the son of the surety or debtor shall not in general be obliged to pay:

160. 'Such is the rule in cases of a surety for appearance or good behaviour; but if a surety for payment should die, the judge may compel even his heirs to discharge the debt.

161. 'On what account then is it, that after the death of a surety other than for payment, the creditor may in one case demand the debt of the heir, all the affairs of the deceased being known and proved?

162. 'If the surety had received money from the debtor, and had enough to pay the debt, the son of him who so received it, shall discharge the debt out of his inherited property: this is a sacred ordinance.

163. 'A contract made by a person intoxicated or insane, or grievously disordered, or wholly dependent, by an infant or a decrepit old man, or in the name of another, by a person without authority, is utterly null.

164. 'That plaint can have no effect though it may be supported by evidence, which contains a cause of action inconsistent with positive law or with settled usage.

165. 'When the judge discovers a fraudulent pledge or sale, a fraudulent gift and acceptance, or in what ever other case he detects fraud, let him annul the whole transaction.

166. 'If the debtor be dead, and if the money borrowed was expended for the use of his family, it must be paid by that family, divided or undivided, out of their own estate.

167. 'Should even a slave make a contract in the name of his absent master for the behoof of the family, that master, whether in his own country or abroad, shall not rescind it.

168. 'What is given by force to a man who cannot accept it legally, what is by force enjoyed, by force caused to be written, and all other things done by force or against free consent, Menu has pronounced void.

169. 'Three are troubled by means of others, namely, witnesses, sureties, and inspectors of causes; and four collect wealth slowly, with benefit to others, a Brahmen, a money-lender, a merchant, and a king.

170. 'Let no king, how indigent soever, take any thing which ought not to be taken; nor let him, how wealthy soever, decline taking that which he ought to take, be it ever so small:

171. 'By taking what ought not to be taken, and by refusing what ought to be received, the king betrays his own weakness, and is lost both in this world and in the next;

172. ‘But by taking his due, by administering justice, and by protecting the weak, the king augments his own force, and is exalted in the next world and in this.

173. 'Therefore, let the king, like Yama, resigning what may be pleasing or unpleasing to himself, live by the strict rules of Yama, his anger being repressed, and his organs kept in subjection.

174. ‘That evil-minded king, who, through infatuation, decides causes with injustice, his enemies, through the disaffection of his people, quickly reduce to a state of dependence;

175. ‘But him, who subduing both lust and wrath, examines causes with justice, his people naturally seek, as rivers the ocean.

176. ‘The debtor who complains before the king, that his creditor has recovered the debt by his own legal act, as before-mentioned, shall be compelled by the king to pay a quarter of the sum as a fine, and the creditor shall be left in possession of his own.

177. ‘Even by personal labour shall the debtor pay what is adjudged, if he be of the same class with the creditor, or of a lower; but a debtor of a higher class must pay it according to his income, by little and little.

178. ‘By this system of rules let the king decide, with equal justice, all disputes between men opposing each other, having ascertained the truth by evidence or the oaths of the parties.

179. 'A sensible man should make a deposit with some person of high birth, and of good morals, well acquainted with law, habitually veracious, having a large family, wealthy and venerable.

180. Whatever thing, and in whatever manner a person shall deposit in the hands of another, the same thing, and in the same manner, ought to be received back by the owner; as the delivery was, so must be the receipt.

181. 'He, who restores not to the depositor, on his request, what has been deposited, may first be tried by the judge in the following manner, the depositor himself being absent.

182. 'On failure of witnesses, let the judge actually deposit gold, or precious things, with the defendant, by the artful contrivance of spies, who have passed the age of child-hood, and whole persons are engaging:

183. 'Should the defendant restore that deposit in the manner and shape in which it was bailed by the spies, there is nothing in his hands, for which others can justly accuse him;

184. 'But if he restore not the gold, or precious things, as he ought, to those emissaries, let him be apprehended and compelled to pay the value of both deposits; this is a settled rule.

185. 'A deposit, whether sealed up or not, should never be redelivered, while the depositor is alive, to his heir apparent or presumptive: both sorts of deposits, indeed, are extinct, or cannot be demanded by the heir, if the depositor die, in that case; but not, unless he die, for should the heir apparent keep them, the depositor himself may sue the bailee:

186. 'But, if a depositary by his own free act shall deliver a deposit to the heir of a deceased bailor, he must not be harassed with claims of a similar kind, either by the king, or by that heir;

187. 'And, if similar claims be made, the king must decide the questions after friendly admonition, without having recourse to artifice; for the honest disposition of the man being proved, the judge must proceed with mildness.

188. 'Such is the mode of ascertaining the right in all these cases of a deposit: in the case of a deposit sealed up, the bailee shall incur no censure on the redelivery, unless he have altered the 'seal or taken out something.

189. 'If a deposit be seized by thieves or destroyed by vermine, or washed away by water, or consumed by fire, the bailee shall not be obliged to make it good, unless he took part of it for himself.

190. 'The defendant, who denies a deposit, and the plaintiff who asserts it, let the king try by all sorts of expedients, and by the modes of ordeal prescribed in the Veda.

In almost all ages there has existed the belief that under the divine influence the human frame was able to resist the action of fire. Even the sceptic Pliny seems to share the superstition as to the families of the Hirpi, who at the annual sacrifice made to Apollo, on Mount Soracte, walked without injury over piles of burning coals, in recognition of which, by a perpetual senatus consultum, they were relieved from all public burdens. That fire applied either directly or indirectly should be used in the appeal to God was therefore natural, and the convenience with which it could be employed by means of iron rendered that the most usual form of the ordeal. As employed in Europe, under the name of judicium ferri or juise it was administered in two essentially different forms. The one (vomeres igniti, examen pedale) consisted in laying on the ground at certain distances six, nine, or in some cases twelve, red-hot ploughshares, among which the accused walked barefooted, sometimes blindfolded, when it became an ordeal of pure chance, and sometimes compelled to press each iron with his naked feet. The other and more usual form obliged the patient to carry in his hand for a certain distance, usually nine feet, a piece of red-hot iron, the weight of which was determined by law and varied with the importance of the question at issue or the magnitude of the alleged crime. Thus, among the Anglo-Saxons, in the “simple ordeal” the iron weighed one pound, in the “triple ordeal” three pounds. The latter is prescribed for incendiaries and “morth-slayers” (secret murderers), for false coining, and for plotting against the king’s life; while at a later period, in the collection known as the Laws of Henry I., we find it extended to cases of theft, robbery, arson, and felonies in general. In Sweden, for theft, the form known as trux iarn was employed, in which the accused had to carry the red-hot iron and deposit it in a hole twelve paces from the starting-point; in other cases the ordeal was called scuz iarn, when he carried it nine paces and then cast it from him. These ordeals were held on Wednesday, after fasting on bread and water on Monday and Tuesday; the hand or foot was washed, after which it was allowed to touch nothing till it came in contact with the iron; it was then wrapped up and sealed until Saturday, when it was opened in presence of the accuser and the judges. In Spain, the iron had no definite weight, but was a palm and two fingers in length, with four feet, high enough to enable the criminal to lift it conveniently. The episcopal benediction was necessary to consecrate the iron to its judicial use. A charter of 1082 shows that the Abbey of Fontanelle in Normandy had one of approved sanctity, which, through the ignorance of a monk, was applied to other purposes. The Abbot thereupon asked the Archbishop of Rouen to consecrate another, and before the latter would consent the institution had to prove its right to administer the ordeal. The wrapping up and sealing of the hand was a general custom, derived from the East, and usually after three days it was uncovered and the decision was rendered in accordance with its condition. These proceedings were accompanied by the same solemn observances which have been already described, the iron itself was duly exorcised, and the intervention of God was invoked in the name of all the manifestations of Divine clemency or wrath by the agency of fire—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the burning bush of Horeb, the destruction of Sodom, and the day of judgment. Occasionally, when several criminals were examined together, the same piece of heated iron was borne by them successively, giving a manifest advantage to the last one, who had to endure a temperature considerably less than his companions.

In India this was one of the earliest forms of the ordeal, in use even in the Vedic period, as it is referred to in the Khandogya Upanishad of the Sama Veda, where the head of a hatchet is alluded to as the implement employed for the trial—subsequently replaced by a ploughshare. In the seventh century, A. D., Hiouen Thsang reports that the red-hot iron was applied to the tongue of the accused as well as to the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, his innocence being designated by the amount of resultant injury. This may have been a local custom, for, according to Institutes of Vishnu, closely followed by Yajnavalkya, the patient bathes and performs certain religious ceremonies; then after rubbing his hands with rice bran, seven green asvattha leaves are placed on the extended palms and bound with a thread. A red-hot iron ball or spear-head, weighing about two pounds and three-quarters, is then brought, and the judge adjures it—

“Thou, O fire, dwellest in the interior of all things like a witness. O fire, thou knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man being arraigned in a cause desires to be cleared from guilt. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

The glowing ball is then placed on the hands of the accused, and with it he has to walk across seven concentric circles of cow-dung, each with a radius sixteen fingers’ breadth larger than the preceding, and throw the ball into a ninth circle, where it must burn some grass placed there for the purpose. If this be accomplished without burning the hands, he gains his cause, but the slightest injury convicts him. A minimum limit of a thousand pieces of silver was established at an early period as requisite to justify the administration of this form of ordeal in a suit. But the robust faith in the power of innocence characteristic of the earlier Hindus seems to have diminished, for subsequent recensions of the code and later lawgivers increase the protection afforded to the hand by adding to the asvattha leaves additional strata of dharba grass and barley moistened with curds, the whole bound around with seven turns of raw silk. Ali Ibrahim Khan relates a case which he witnessed at Benares in 1783 in which a man named Sancar, accused of larceny, offered to be tried in this manner.... The ordeal took place in presence of a large assemblage, when, to the surprise of every one, Sancar carried the red-hot ball through the seven circles, threw it duly into the ninth where it burnt the grass, and exhibited his hands uninjured.... Even in 1873, the Bombay Gazette states that this ordeal is still practised in Oodeypur, where a case had shortly before occurred wherein a husbandman had been obliged to prove his innocence by holding a red-hot ploughshare in his hands, duly guarded with peepul leaves, turning his face towards the sun and invoking it: “Thou Sun-God, if I am actually guilty of the crime, punish me; if not, let me escape unscathed from the ordeal!”—and in this instance, also, the accused was uninjured.

A peculiar modification of the hot-iron ordeal is employed by the aboriginal hill-tribes of Rajmahal, in the north of Bengal, when a person believes himself to be suffering from witchcraft. The Satane and the Cherreen are used to find out the witch, and then the decision is confirmed by a person representing the sufferer, who, with certain religious ceremonies, applies his tongue to a red-hot iron nine times, unless sooner burnt. A burn is considered to render the guilt of the accused indubitable, and his only appeal is to have the trial repeated in public, when, if the same result follows, he is bound either to cure the bewitched person or to suffer death if the latter dies....


The ordeal of fire, administered directly, without the intervention either of water or of iron, is one of the most ancient forms, as is shown by the allusions to it in both the Hindu Vedic writings, the adventure of Siawush, and the passage in the Antigone of Sophocles (pp. 266, 267, 270). In this, its simplest form, it may be considered the origin of the proverbial expression, “J’en mettrois la main au feu,” [Google translate: I put my hand in the fire] as an affirmation of positive belief, showing how thoroughly the whole system engrained itself in the popular mind. In India, as practised in modern times, its form approaches somewhat the ordeal of the burning ploughshares. A trench is dug nine hands in length, two spans in breadth, and one span in depth. This is filled with peepul wood, which is then set on fire, and the accused walks into it with bare feet. A more humane modification is described in the seventh century by Hiouen-Thsang as in use when the accused was too tender to undergo the trial by red-hot iron. He simply cast into the flames certain flower-buds, when, if they opened their leaves, he was acquitted; if they were burnt up, he was condemned....

-- Superstition and Force, by Henry Charles Lea

191. 'He who restores not a thing really deposited, and he, who demands what he never bailed, shall both, for a second offence, be punished as thieves, if gold, pearls, or the like be demanded; or, in the case of a trifling demand, shall pay a fine equal to the value of the thing claimed:

192. 'For the first offence, the king should compel a fraudulent depositary, without any distinction between a deposit under seal or open, to pay a fine equal to its value.

193. 'That man, who, by false pretences, gets into his hands the goods of another, shall, together with his accomplices, be punished by various degrees of whipping or mutilation, or even by death.

194. 'Regularly, a deposit should be produced, the same in kind and quantity as it was bailed, by the same and to the same person, by whom and from whom it was received, and before the same company, who were witnesses to the deposit: he who produces it, in a different manner, ought to be fined;

195. 'But a thing, privately deposited, should be privately restored by and to the person, by and from whom it was received: as the bailment was, so should be the delivery, according to a rule in the Veda.

196. 'Thus let the king decide causes concerning a deposit, or a friendly loan for use, without showing rigour to the depositary.

197. 'Him, who sells the property of another man, without the assent of the owner, the judge shall not admit as a competent witness, but shall treat as a thief, who pretends that he has committed no theft:

198. 'If, indeed he be a near kinsman of the owner, he shall be fined six hundred panas; but, if he be neither his kinsman or a claimant under him, he commits an offence equal to larceny.

199. 'A gift or sale, thus made by any other than the true owner, must, by a settled rule, be considered, in judicial proceedings, as not made.

200. 'Where occupation for a time shall be proved, but no sort of title shall appear, the sale cannot be supported: title, not occupation, is essential to its support; and this rule also is fixed.

201. 'He who has received a chattel, by purchase in open market, before a number of men, justly acquires the absolute property, by having paid the price of it, if he can produce the vendor;

202. 'But if the vendor be not producible, and the vendee prove the publick sale, the latter must be dismissed by the king, without punishment; and the former owner, who lost the chattel, may take it back, on paying the vendee half its value.

203. 'One commodity mixed with another, shall never be sold as unmixed; nor a bad commodity as good; nor less than agreed on; nor any thing kept at a distance or concealed, lest some defect in it should be discovered.

204. 'If after one damsel has been shown, another be offered to the bridegroom, who had purchased leave to marry her from her next kinsman, he may become the husband of both for the same price; this law Menu ordained.

205. 'The kinsman, who gives a damsel in marriage, having first openly told her blemishes, whether she be insane, or disordered with elephantiasis, or defiled by connexion with a man, shall suffer no punishment.

206. 'If an officiating priest, actually engaged in a sacrifice, abandon his work, a share only, in proportion to his work done, shall be given to him by his partners in the business, out of their common pay:

207. ‘But if he discontinue his work without fraud, after the time of giving the sacrificial fees, he may take his full share, and cause what remains to be performed by another priest.

208. 'Where, on the performance of solemn rites, a specifick fee is ordained for each part of them, shall he alone, who performs that part, receive the fee, or shall all the priests take the perquisites jointly?

209. 'At some holy rites, let the reader of the Yajurveda take the car, and the Brahma, or superintending priest, the horse; or, on another occasion, let the reader of the Rigveda take the horse, and the chanter of the Samaveda receive the carriage, in which the purchased materials of the sacrifice had been brought.

210. 'A hundred cows being distributable among sixteen priests, the four chief or first set, are entitled to near half, or forty eight; the next four to half of that number; the third set, to a third part of it; and the fourth set, to a quarter:

211. 'According to this rule, or in proportion to the work, must allotments of shares be given to men here below, who, though in conjunction, perform their several parts of the business.

212. 'Should money or goods be given, or promised as a gift, by one man to another who asks it for some religious act, the gift shall be void, if that act be not afterwards performed:

213. 'If the money be delivered, and the receiver, through pride or avarice, refuse in that case to return it, he shall be fined one suverna by the king, as a punishment for his theft.

214. 'Such, as here declared, is the rule ordained for withdrawing what has been given: I will, next, propound the law for non-payment of wages.

215. 'That hired servant or workman, who, not from any disorder but from insolence, fails to perform his work according to his agreement, shall be fined eight racticas, and his wages or hire shall not be paid.

216. 'But if he be really ill, and, when restored to health, shall perform his work according to his original bargain, he shall receive his pay even for a very long time:

217. 'Yet, whether he be sick or well, if the work stipulated be not performed by another for him or by himself, his whole wages are forfeited, though the work want but a little of being complete.

218. 'This is the general rule concerning work undertaken for wages or hire: next I will fully declare the law concerning such men as break their promises.

219. 'The man, among the traders and other inhabitants of a town or district, who breaks a promise through avarice, though he had taken an oath to perform it, let the king banish from his realm:

220. 'Or, according to circumstances, let the judge, having arrested the promise-breaker, condemn him to pay six nishcas, or four suvernas, or one satamana of silver, or all three if he deserve such a fine.

221. 'Among all citizens, and in all classes, let a just king observe this rule for imposing fines on men who shall break their engagements.

222. 'A man who has bought or sold any thing in this world, that has a fixed price, and is not perishable, as land or metals, and wishes to rescind the contract, may give or take back such a thing within ten days;

223. 'But, after ten days, he shall neither give nor take it back: the giver or the taker, except by consent, shall be fined by the king six hundred panas.

224. 'The king himself shall take a fine of ninety-six panas from him who gives a blemished girl in marriage, for a reward, without avowing her blemish;

225. 'But the man, who, through malignity, says of a damsel, that she is no virgin, shall be fined a hundred panas, if he cannot prove her defilement.

226. 'The holy nuptial texts are applied solely to virgins, and no where on earth to girls who have lost their virginity; since those women are in general excluded from legal ceremonies:

227. 'The nuptial texts are a certain rule in regard to wedlock, and the bridal contract is known by the learned to be complete and irrevocable, on the seventh step of the married fair, hand in hand, after those texts have been pronounced.

228. 'By this law, in all business whatever here below, must the judge confine, within the path of rectitude, a person inclined to rescind his contract of sale and purchase.

229. 'I now will decide exactly, according to principles of law, the contests usually arising from the fault of such as own herds of cattle, and of such as are hired to keep them.

230. 'By day the blame falls on the herdsman; by night on the owner, if the cattle be fed and kept in his own house; but, if the place of their food and custody be different, the keeper incurs the blame.

231. 'That hired servant, whose wages are paid with milk, may, with the assent of the owner, milk the best cow out of ten: such are the wages of herdsmen, unless they be paid in a different mode.

232. 'The herdsman himself shall make good the loss of a beast, which through his want of due care, has strayed, has been destroyed by reptiles, or killed by dogs, or has died by falling into a pit;

233. ‘But he shall not be compelled to make it good, when robbers have carried it away, if, after fresh proclamation and pursuit, he give notice to his master in a proper place and season.

234. 'When cattle die, let him carry to his master their ears, their hides, their tails, the skin below their navels, their tendons, and the liquor exuding from their foreheads: let him also point out their limbs.

235. 'A flock of goats or of sheep being attacked by wolves, and the keeper not going to repel the attack, he shall be responsible for every one of them, which a wolf shall violently kill;

236. 'But, if any one of them, while they graze together near a wood, and the shepherd keeps them in order, shall be suddenly killed by a wolf springing on it, he shall not in that case be responsible.

237. 'On all sides of a village or small town let a space be left for pasture, in breadth either four hundred cubits, or three casts of a large stick; and thrice that space round a city or considerable town:

238. 'Within that pasture ground, if cattle do any damage to grain in a field uninclosed with a hedge, the king shall not punish the herdsman.

239. 'Let the owner of the field inclose it with a hedge of thorny plants, over which a camel could not look; and let him stop every gap, through which a dog or a boar could thrust his head.

240. 'Should cattle, attended by a herdsman, do mischief near a highway, in an inclosed field or near the village, he shall be fined a hundred panas; but against cattle which have no keeper, let the owner of the field secure it.

If a Person, without receiving Wages, or Subsistence, or Cloaths, attends Ten Milch Cows, in that Case, he shall select, for his own Use, the Milk of that Cow, whichever produces the most; and if he attends more Cows than those, he shall take Milk, after the same Rate, in lieu of Wages.

If a Person attends One Hundred Cows, for the Space of One Year, without any Appointment of Wages, in that Case, by way of Wages, he shall take to himself One Heifer of Three Years old; and also, of all those Cows that produce Milk, whatever the Quantity may be, after every Eight Days, he shall take to himself the Milk, the entire Produce of One Day.

If a Person attends Two Hundred Cows, for the Space of One Year, without Appointment of Wages, in that Case, after every Eight Days, he shall take to himself the Milk, the entire Produce of One Day; and also, by way of Wages, One Cow in Milk, and her Calf.

Cattle shall be delivered over to the Cowherd in the Morning; the Cowherd shall tend the Herd the whole Day with Grass and Water, and in the Evening shall redeliver them to the Master, in the same Manner as they were intrusted to him; if, by the Fault of the Cowherd, any of the Cattle are hurt or stolen, that Cowherd shall make them good.

When a Person is employed, Night and Day, in attending Cattle, if One of them, by his Fault, should be hurt, he shall make it good.

If a Thief takes away, by Violence, a Cow or a Buffaloe, in the Owner's Sight, and the Cowherd, as soon as he knows the Circumstance, makes a violent Outcry, but is not able to preserve them, it is not to be imputed the Fault of the Cowherd; and, if in that Country, or in that particular Spot, any Calamity should happen, during which Time the domestick Animals come to any Damage, it is not to be imputed the Fault of the Cowherd, the Loss shall fall upon the Owner.

If a Cowherd drives away any Cows, Buffaloes, and such Kinds of Cattle, to feed, or on any Account carries them to another Place, he shall guard those Cattle, to the utmost of his Power, from any Accident of Flies, Thieves, Tigers, Pits, Rocks, or any such Kind of Misfortune; if he is unable to protect them from these Accidents, he shall, with a loud Voice, give Notice to the People there, or to the Owner of the Cattle; if he does this, no Fault lies upon the Cowherd; but if he neglects to act in this Manner, he shall make good the Cattle, and the Magistrate shall fine him Thirteen Puns of Cowries.

If a Cowherd should go to his own House, or to any other Place, and leave any sick Cattle upon the Plains, the Magistrate shall censure him.

If a Cow, or Buffaloe, or any such Kind of Cattle, should die of any Sickness, while the Cowherd, knowing the Remedy proper for such Sickness, neglected to administer it, the Magistrate shall censure him, and cause him to give such an Animal to the Owner of the Herd; he shall also fine him Thirteen Puns of Cowries, and cause the proportionate Part of his Wages to be paid him.

When a Cowherd hath led the Cattle to a distant Place to feed, if it happens, that One, or Two, or more of those should die of some Distemper, notwithstanding the Cowherd applied the proper Remedy, in that Case, the Cowherd shall carry the Head, or Tail, or Fore or Hind Foot, or some such convincing Proof taken from that Animal's Body, to the Owner of the Cattle; having done this, he shall be no farther answerable; if he neglects to act thus, he shall make good the Loss.


241. 'In other fields, the owner of cattle doing mischief shall be fined one pana and a quarter; but, in all places, the value of the damaged grain must be paid: such is the fixed rule concerning a husbandman.

242. 'For damage by a cow before ten days have passed since her calving, by bulls kept for impregnation, and by cattle consecrated to the deity, whether attended or unattended, Menu has ordained no fine.

243. 'If land be injured, by the fault of the farmer himself, as if he fails to sow it in due time, he shall be fined ten times as much as the king's share of the crop, that might otherwise have been raised; but only five times as much, if it was the fault of his servants without his knowledge.

244. 'These rules let a just prince observe in all cases of transgression by masters, their cattle, and their herdsmen.

245. 'If a contest arise between two villages, or landholders, concerning a boundary, let the king, or his judge, ascertain the limits in the month of Jyaisht'ha, when the land-marks are seen more distinctly.

246. 'When boundaries first are established, let strong trees be planted on them, Vatas, Pippalas, Palasas, Salmalis, Salas or Talas; or such trees (like the Udumbara or Vajradru) as abound in milk;

247. 'Or clustering shrubs, or Venus of different sorts, or Sami-trees, and creepers, or Saras, and clumps of Cubjacas: and mounds of earth should be raised on them, so that the land-mark may not easily perish:  

248. 'Lakes and wells, pools and streams, ought also to be made on the common limits, and temples dedicated to the gods.

249. 'The persons concerned, reflecting on the perpetual trespaffes committed by men here below through ignorance of boundaries, should cause other land-marks to be concealed under ground:

250. 'Large pieces of stone, bones, tails of cows, bran, ashes, potsherds, dried cow-dung, bricks and tiles, charcoal, pebbles and sand,

251. 'And substances of all sorts, which the earth corrodes not even in a long time, should be placed in jars not appearing above ground on the common boundary.

CHAP. XII. Of Boundaries and Limits.

To ascertain Boundaries, upon the Confines of those Boundaries shall be planted the Male and Female Banyan Tree, or the Plass Tree, or the Seemul (Cotton Tree) or the Saul, or the Toddy Tree, or the Zukkoom Tree, or the Lutta Tree, or the Bamboo, or a Mound of Earth must be made, or any large Tree, that produces not a great Number of Branches, must be planted; or by a Pool, a Well, a Bason, a Ditch, or any such Signs above-mentioned, shall the Boundaries be openly described; or a Temple shall be built there to Shaghur (i.e.) their Deity.

Dust, or Bones, or Seboos (i.e.) Bran, or Cinders, or Scraps of Earthen Ware, or the Hairs of a Cow's Tail, or the Seed of the Cotton Plant, all these Things above-mentioned, being put into an Earthen Pot, filled to the Brim, a Man must privately bury upon the Confines of his own Boundary, and there preserve Stones also, or Bricks, or Sea Sand, either of these Three Things may be buried, by way of Land-Mark of the Limits; for all these Things, upon remaining a long Time in the Ground, are not liable to rot, or become putrid; any other Thing also, which will remain a long Time in the Ground, without becoming rotten, or putrid, may be buried for the same Purpose: Those Persons, who, by any of these Methods, can shew the Line of their Boundaries, shall acquaint their Sons with the reflective Land-Marks of those Boundaries; and in the same Manner those Sons also shall explain the Signs of the Limits to their Children: If all Persons would act in this Manner, there could be no Dispute concerning Limits and Boundaries.

If a Suit, for the Limits of Ground, should arise, the Magistrate, having inspected the open and private Land-Marks above described, shall settle the Suit; if any Doubt or Perplexity should intervene, the Plaintiff and Defendant shall produce to the Magistrate their respective Accounts of Possession, under Proof, and the Suit of Boundaries shall be settled: If also there is no Land-Mark, and they cannot prove their respective Possessions, then the Plaintiff shall find out some old Men, well acquainted with the Boundaries, or the Person who first marked out the Spot, and settle the Dispute by their Means; but the Dispute of Limits shall not be settled by the Testimony of only One experienced Person, it shall not be determined by less than the Testimony of Four Persons.


252. 'By such marks, or by the course of a stream, and long continued possession, the judge may ascertain the limit between the lands of two parties in litigation:

253. 'Should there be a doubt, even on the inspection of those marks, recourse must be had, for the decision of such a contest, to the declarations of witnesses.

254. 'Those witnesses must be examined concerning the land-marks, in the presence of all the townsmen or villagers, or of both the contending parties:

255. 'What the witnesses, thus assembled and interrogated, shall positively declare concerning the limits, must be recorded in writing, together with all their names.

256. 'Let them, putting earth on their heads, wearing chaplets of red flowers and clad in red mantles, be sworn by the reward of all their several good actions to give correct evidence concerning the metes and bounds.

257. 'Veracious witnesses, who give evidence as the law requires, are absolved from their sins; but such as give it unjustly, shall each be fined two hundred panas.

258. 'If there be no witnesses, let four men, who dwell on all the four sides of the two villages, make a decision concerning the boundary, being duly prepared, like the witnesses, in the presence of the king.

259. 'If there be no such neighbours on all sides, nor any men, nor any men whose ancestors had lived there since the villages were built, nor other inhabitants of towns, who can give evidence on the limits, the judge must examine the following men, who inhabit the woods;

260. 'Hunters, fowlers, herdsmen, fishers, diggers for roots, catchers of snakes, gleaners, and other foresters:

261. 'According to their declaration, when they are duly examined, let the king with precision order land-marks to be fixed on the boundary line between the two villages.

262. 'As to the bounds of arable fields, wells or pools, gardens and houses, the testimony of next neighbours on every side must be considered as the best means of decision:

263. 'Should the neighbours say any thing untrue, when two men dispute about a landmark, the king shall make each of those witnesses pay the middlemost of the three usual amercements.

264. 'He, who by means of intimidation, shall possess himself of a house, a pool, a field, or a garden, shall be fined five hundred panas; but only two hundred, if he trespassed through ignorance of the right.  

265. 'If the boundary cannot be otherwise ascertained, let the king, knowing what is just, that is, without partiality, consulting the future benefit of both parties, make a bound line between their lands: this is a settled law.

266. 'Thus has the rule been propounded for decisions concerning land-marks: I next will declare the law concerning defamatory words.

267. 'A soldier, defaming a priest, shall be fined a hundred panas; a merchant, thus offending an hundred and fifty, or two hundred; but, for such an offence, a mechanick or servile man shall be whipped.

268. 'A priest shall be fined five hundred, if he slander a soldier; twenty-five if a merchant; and twelve if he slander a man of the servile class.

269. 'For abusing one of the same class, a twice born man, shall be fined only twelve; but for ribaldry not to be uttered, even that and every fine shall be doubled.

270. '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 BRAHMA;

271. 'If he mention their names and classes with contumely, as if he say, "Oh Devadatta, thou refuse of Brahmens,” an iron style, ten fingers long, shall be thrust red hot into his mouth.

272. 'Should he, through pride, give instruction to priests concerning their duty, let the king order some hot oil to be dropped into his mouth and his ear.

273. 'He, who falsely denies through insolence, the sacred knowledge, the country, the class, or the corporeal investiture of a man, equal in rank, shall be compelled to pay a fine of two hundred panas.

274. 'If a man call another blind with one eye, or lame, or defective in any similar way, he shall pay the small fine of one pana, even though he speak truth.

275. 'He shall be fined a hundred, who defames his mother, his father, his wife, his brother, his son, or his preceptor; and he who gives not his preceptor the way.
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Re: The Ordinances of Menu, by Sir William Jones

Postby admin » Sat Jul 24, 2021 7:00 am

Part 3 of 3

276. For mutual abuse by a priest and a soldier, this fine must be imposed by a learned king; the lowest amercement on the priest, and the middlemost on the soldier.

277. 'Such exactly, as before-mentioned, must be the punishment of a merchant and a mechanick in respect of their several classes, except the slitting of the tongue: this is a fixed rule of punishment.

SECT. II. Of the Punishment for the Pak-Parish, or Scandalous and Bitter Expressions.

If a Man, who is of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, makes him become falsely suspected of the Crime of Atee Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him One Thousand Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an inferior Cast to another, and also of inferior Abilities, falsely makes him suspected of the Crime of Atee Patttk, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Thousand Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of superior Cast, and of superior Abilities to another, falsely causes him to be suspected of the Crime of Atee Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Five Hundred Puns of Cowries.

Whoever falsely accuses a Woman of the Crime of Alee Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Thousand Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him, saying, "You have committed the Crime of Maha Patuk" the Magistrate shall fine him Five Hundred Puns of Cowries.  

If a Man of inferior Cast, and of inferior Abilities to another, causes him to be falsely suspected of the Crime of Maha Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him One Thousand Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of a superior Cast, and of superior Abilities to another, makes a false Accusation of the Crime of Maha Patuk against him, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred and Fifty Puns of Cowries.

If a Man falsely makes Accusations of the Crime of Maha Patuk against a Woman, the Magistrate shall fine him One Thousand Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him, saying, "You have committed One of the Crimes of Anoo Patuk" the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an inferior Cast, and of inferior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of the Crime of Anoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of a superior Cast, and of superior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of the Crime of Anoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Fifty Puns of Cowries.

If a Man falsely accuses a Woman of the Crime of Anoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Sooder falsely accuses a Bramin, or a Chehteree, or a Bice, of either of the Crimes of Atee Patuk, or Maha Patuk, or Anoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall cut out his Tongue, and thrust a hot Iron of Ten Fingers breadth into his Mouth.

If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him of any of the leaaer Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Fifty Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an inferior Cast, and of inferior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of any of the lesser Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of a superior Cast, and of superior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of any of the lesser Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Twenty-five Puns of Glories.

If a Man falsely accuses a Woman of any One of the lesser Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him of any One of the medium Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred and Fifty Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an inferior Cast, and of inferior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of any One of the medium Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Five Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of a superior Cast, and of superior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of any One of the medium Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred and Twenty-five Puns of Cowries.

If a Man falsely accuses a Woman of any One of the medium Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Five Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him of any of the greater Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him Five Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an inferior Cast, and of inferior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of any One of the greater Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him One Thousand Puns of Cowries.


If a Man falsely accuses a Woman of any One of the greater Crimes of the Opoo Patuk, the Magistrate shall fine him One Thousand Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him of any One of the lesser Crimes of the Jatee Bherun Kushker, or of the Shunkeree Kurrun, or of the Apateree Kurrun, or of the Melbhoo, or of the Perkernukka, the Magistrate shall fine him Twenty-five Puns of Cowries.  

If a Man of an inferior Cast, and of inferior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of any One of the lesser Crimes of the Jatee Bherun Kushker, or of the Shunkeree Kurrun, or of theApateree Kurrun, or of the Melabhoo, or of the Perkernukka, the Magistrate shall fine him Fifty Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of a superior Cast, and of superior Abilities to another, falsely accuses him of any One of the lesser Crimes of the Jatee Bherun Kushker, or of the Shunkeree Kurrun, or of the Apateree Kurrun, or of the Melabhoo, or of the Perkernukka, the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred Puns of Cowries.


If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him of any One of the medium Crimes of the Jatee Bherun Kushker, or of the Shunkeree Kurrun, or of the Apateree Kurrun, or of the Melabhoo, or of the Perkernukka, the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred and Twenty-five Puns of Cowries.



If a Man accuses a Woman of any of the medium Crimes of the Jatee Bherun Kushker, or of the Shunkeree Kurrun, or of the Apateree Kurrun, or of the Melabhoo, or of the Perkernukka, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred and Fifty Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with another, falsely accuses him of any One of the greater Crimes of the Jatee Bherun Kushker, or of the Shunkeree Kurrun, or of the Apateree Kurrun, or of the Melabhoo, or of the Perkernukka, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred and Fifty Puns of Cowries.



If a Man falsely accuses a Woman of any One of the greater Crimes of the Jatee Bherun Kushker, or of the Shunkeree Kurrun, or of the Apateree Kurrun, or of the Melabhoo, or of the Perkernukka, the Magistrate shall fine him Five Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man be deficient in a Hand, or a Foot, or an Ear, or an Eye, or a Nose, or any other Member, and a Person of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with him, should say to him, in a reproachful Manner, "You are deficient in a Hand, or a Foot, or an Ear, or an Eye, or a Nose, or any other Member," or should say to him, "Such Limb of yours is very beautiful," the Magistrate shall fine him Twelve Puns of Cowries.

If a Man be deficient in a Hand, or a Foot, or an Ear, or an Eye, or a Nose, or any other Member, and a Person of an inferior Cast, and of inferior Abilities to him, should thus say to him, in a reproachful Manner, "You are deficient in a Hand, or a Foot, or an Ear, or an Eye, or a Nose, or any other Member," or should thus say, "This Limb of yours is very beautiful," in that Case, the Magistrate shall fine him Twenty-four Puns of Cowries.

If a Man be deficient in a Hand, or a Foot, or an Ear, or an Eye, or a Nose, or any other Member, and a Person of a superior Cast, and of superior Abilities to him, should thus, in a reproachful Manner, say to him, "You are deficient in a Hand, or a Foot, or an Ear, or an Eye, or a Nose, or any other Member," or should thus say, "This Limb of yours is very beautiful," in that Case, the Magistrate shall fine him Six Puns of Cowries.

If a Woman be deficient in a Hand, or a Foot, or an Ear, or an Eye, or a Nose, or any other Member, and a Man should reproachfully say to her, "You are deficient in such Limbs," or, "Such Limb of yours is very beautiful," in that Case, the Magistrate shall fine him Twenty-four Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an equal Cast, and of equal Abilities with any Person, who is well skilled in any Profession, should say to him, by way of setting off his own Excellence, "You have no Skill whatever," the Magistrate, in that Case, shall fine him Two Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of an inferior Cast, and inferior Abilities to any Person, well skilled in any Profession, should say to him, by way of setting off his own Excellence, "You have, in fact, no Skill whatever," in that Case, the Magistrate shall fine him Four Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of a superior Cast, and superior Abilities to any Person, well skilled in any Profession, should say to him, by way of setting off his own Excellence, "You have no Skill whatever," in that Case, the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man speaks reproachfully of any Country, as, "That Country is most particularly bad," the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man should say of a Bramin, that, "This Man is no Bramin" or of a Chehteree that, "This Man is no Chehteree" or in such Manner should speak reproachfully of any Cast, in that Case, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man should say of a religious Person, that, "This is not a religious Person," the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man speaks reproachfully of any upright Magistrate, the Magistrate shall cut out his Tongue, or, having confiscated all his Effects, shall banish him the Kingdom. If a Magistrate for his own Good hath passed any Resolutions, whoever refuses to submit to such Resolutions, the Magistrate shall cut out that Person's Tongue.

If a Magistrate, or a Bramin, be convicted of any Crime, they shall not be put to Death; nor shall their Hand, or Foot, or any other Limb be cut off.

If a Man is a Robber, or is secluded from his own Cast, it is not right to call him a Robber, or an Outcast; if any Person should call him a Robber, or an Outcast, the Magistrate shall fine him in Half the Mulct of a Robber, or an Outcast.

If a Man is in Company with a Robber, or is desirous to eat and drink with an Outcast, and another Person should forbid so to do, that Person shall not be amenable.

If a Man speaks reproachfully of his Mother, or of his Father, or of his Spiritual Director, or of his Elder Brother, or of a Woman of good Character, or of his Son, the Magistrate shall fine him One Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man speaks reproachfully of his Wife's Father or Mother, the Magistrate shall fine him Fifty Puns of Cowries.

If Two Persons mutually abuse each other, or mutually utter false Accusations against each other, the Magistrate shall take an equal Fine from both Parties.  

In any Affair wherein a Fine has not been specified, the Magistrate nevertheless shall take a Fine from the Party, upon Intelligence of the Affair.

In any Affair where the Cast and Science of the Party are mentioned, a Fine shall be taken, according to the Amount at which that particular Cast and Science are rated.

If a Person, from Intoxication, or Idiotism, should speak reproachfully of any One, the Magistrate shall not hold him amenable.

If a Man should have spoken reproachfully of another, or should have abused him, and afterwards says, "I spoke it inconsiderately, or in jest, and I will not utter such Expressions in future," the Magistrate shall take from him Half the Fine that has been specified for such Fault.

If any Man should say, that, "The Magistrate will die at such a particular Time," the Magistrate shall fine that Person Eight Hundred Puns of Cowries.

If a Man of inferior Cast, proudly affecting an Equality with a Person of superior Cast, should speak at the same Time with him, the Magistrate, in that Case, shall fine him to the Extent of his Abilities.


78. 'Thus fully has the law been declared for the punishment of defamatory speech: I will next propound the established law concerning assault and battery.

279. 'With whatever member a low born man shall assault or hurt a superiour, even that member of his must be slit, or cut more or less in proportion to the injury: this is an ordinance of Menu.

280. 'He, who raises his hand or a staff against another, shall have his hand cut; and he who kicks another in wrath, shall have an incision made in his foot.

281. 'A man of the lowest class, who shall insolently place himself on the same seat with one of the highest, shall either be banished with a mark on his hinder parts, or the king shall cause a gash to be made on his buttock:

282. Should he spit on him through pride, the king shall order both of his lips to be gashed; should he urine on him, his penis; should he break wind against him, his anus.

283. 'If he seize the Brahmen by the locks, or by the feet, or by the beard, or by the throat, or by the scrotum, let the king without  hesitation cause incisions to be made in his hands.

284. 'If any man scratch the skin of his equal in class, or fetch blood from him, he shall be fined a hundred panas; if he wound a muscle, six nishcas; but, if he break a bone, let him be instantly banished.

285. 'According to the use and value of all great trees, must a fine be set for injuring them: this is an established rule.

SECT. III. Of the Fines for cutting Trees.

If any Person cuts the Branches of a Male Banyan Tree, or of a Tree, or of a Moolserry Tree, or of a tamarind Tree, or of a Female Banyan Tree, or of any such large Tree, the Magistrate shall fine him Twenty Puns of Cowries; if he cuts the Middle of the Tree, he shall be fined Forty Puns of Cowries; and if he cuts it down from the Roots, he shall be fined Eighty Puns of Cowries.

If a Man cuts any Trees that are in a Yard of a House, or in a Place where the Dead are Cast, or on the Boundaries of Land, or in a Haut, or in a Bazar, or in the Place appropriated to Dewtah (i.e.) the Deity, the Magistrate shall fine him Double the Price of the Trees.

If a Man cuts a Plass Tree, the Magistrate shall fine him Double the Price of the Tree.

If a Man cuts any of the Creeping Tree called Lut, be it a large or a small Tree, or such Kind of the Lut as upon being cut produces a great Number of Branches, or any Tree whose Branches are extremely crooked, or any small Tree, or any Tree which dies after its Fruit is once ripened, the Magistrate shall fine him Ten Puns of Cowries; if he cuts down any Grass, the Magistrate shall fine him One Pun of Cowries.

If a Man cuts a Tree that is capable of bearing Fruit, the Magistrate shall fine him One Thousand Puns of Cowries.

If a Man cuts a Tree that is capable of producing Flowers, the Magistrate shall fine him Five Hundred Puns of Cowries.

Of all these Species of Trees above enumerated, if a Man cuts any One, the Magistrate shall cause him to return to the Owner, a Tree of the same Species with that which was cut; if he has no such Kind of Tree, he shall cause the Price thereof to be paid, and take a Fine, according to the Rate already above specified; nevertheless, a Man may cut Trees for the Purpose of performing the Jugg, or for making a Plough, or for his Houshold Business; in such Cases, there is no Fine.


286. 'If a blow, attended with much pain, be given either to human creatures or cattle, the king shall inflict on the striker a punishment as heavy as the presumed suffering.

287. 'In all cases of hurting a limb, wounding, or fetching blood, the assailant shall pay the expence of a perfect cure; or, on his failure, both full damages and a fine to the same amount.

288. 'He, who injures the goods of another, whether acquainted or unacquainted with the owner of them, shall give satisfaction to the owner, and pay a fine to the king equal to the damage.

289. 'If injury be done to leather or to leathern bags, or utensils made of wood or clay, the fine shall be five times their value.

290. 'The wise reckon ten occasions, in regard to a carriage, its driver, and its owner, on which the fine is remitted; on other occasions a fine is ordained by law:

291. 'The nose-cord or bridle being cut, by some accident without negligence, or the yoke being snapped, on a sudden overturn, or running against any thing without fault, the axle being broken, or the wheel cracked:

292. 'On the breaking of the thongs, of the halter, or of the reins, and when the driver has called aloud to make way, on these occasions has Menu declared that no fine shall be set:

293. 'But, where a carriage has been overturned by the unskilfulness of the driver, there, in the case of any hurt, the master shall be fined two hundred panas.

294. ‘If the driver be skilful, but negligent, the driver alone shall be fined; and those in the carriage shall be fined each a hundred, if the driver be clearly unskilful.

295. ‘Should a driver, being met in the way by another carriage or by cattle, kill any animal by his negligence, a fine shall, without doubt, be imposed by the following rule:

296. 'For killing a man, a fine, equal to that for theft, shall be instantly set; half that amount, for large brute animals, as for a bull or cow, an elephant, a camel, or a horse;

297. ‘For killing very young cattle, the fine shall be two hundred panas; and fifty, for elegant quadrupeds or beautiful birds, as antelopes, parrots, and the like;

298. 'For an ass, a goat, or a sheep, the fine must be five silver mashas; and one mashha for killing a dog or a boar.

299. '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;

300. 'But on the back part only of their bodies, and not on a noble part by any means: he who strikes them otherwise than by this rule, incurs the guilt, or shall pay the fine of a thief.

301. 'This law of assault and battery has been completely declared: I proceed to declare the rule for the settled punishment of theft.

302. ‘In restraining thieves and robbers, let the king use extreme diligence; since, by restraining thieves and robbers, his fame and his domain are increased.

303. Constantly, no doubt, is that king to be honoured, who bestows exemption from fear; since he performs, as it were, a perpetual sacrifice, giving exemption from fear, as a constant sacrificial present.

304. 'A sixth part of the reward for virtuous deeds, performed by the whole people, belongs to the king, who protects them; but, if he protect them not, a sixth part of their iniquity lights on him:

305. 'Of the reward for what every subject reads in the Veda, for what he sacrifices, for what he gives in charity, for what he performs in worship, the king justly takes a sixth part in consequence of protection.

306. 'A king, who acts with justice in defending all creatures, and slays only those who ought to be slain, performs, as it were, each day a sacrifice with a hundred thousand gifts;

307 ‘But a king, who gives no such protection, yet receives taxes in kind or in value, market duties and tolls, the small daily presents for his household, and fines for offences, falls directly, on his death, to a region of horrour.

308. ‘That king, who gives no protection, yet takes a sixth part of the grain as his revenue, wise men have considered as a prince who draws to him the foulness of all his people.

309. 'Be it known, that a monarch who pays no regard to the scriptures, who denies a future state, who acts with rapacity, who protects not his people, yet swallows up their possessions, will sink low indeed after death.

310. ‘With great care and by three methods let him restrain the unjust; by imprisonment, by confinement in fetters, and by various kinds of corporal punishment;

311. ‘Since, by restraining the bad, and by encouraging the good, kings are perpetually made pure, as the twice born are purified by sacrificing.

312. ‘A king who seeks benefit to his own soul, must always forgive parties litigant, children, old men, and sick persons, who inveigh against him.

313. 'He, who forgives persons in pain, when they abuse him, shall, on that account, be exalted in heaven; but he, who excuses them not, through the pride of dominion, shall for that reason sink into hell.

314. 'The stealer of gold from a priest must run hastily to the king, with loosened hair, proclaiming the theft; and adding; "Thus have I sinned, punish me."

315. ‘He must bear on his shoulder a pestle of stone, or a club of c’hadira-wood, or a javelin pointed at both ends, or an iron mace:

316. 'Whether the king strike him with it, or dismiss him unhurt, the thief is then absolved from the crime
; but the king, if he punish him not, shall incur the guilt of the thief.

317. 'The killer of a priest, or destroyer of an embryo, casts his guilt on the willing eater of his provisions; an adulterous wife, on her negligent husband; a bad scholar and sacrificer, on their ignorant preceptor; and a thief, on the forgiving prince.

318 ‘But men who have committed offences, and have received from kings the punishment due to them, go pure to heaven, and become as clear as those who have done well.

319. 'He, who steals the rope or the water-pot from a well, and he, who breaks down a cistern, shall be fined a masha of gold; and that, which he has taken or injured he must restore to its former condition.

320. 'Corporal punishment shall be inflicted on him who deals more than ten cumbhas of grain, (a cumbha is twenty dronas, and a drona two hundred palas:) for less he must be fined eleven times as much, and shall pay to the owner the amount of his property.

321. ‘So shall corporal punishment be inflicted for stealing commodities usually sold by weight, or more than a hundred head of cattle, or gold, or silver, or costly apparel;

322. ‘For stealing more than fifty palas, it is enacted that a hand shall be amputated; for less, the king shall set a fine eleven times as much as the value.

323. 'For stealing men of high birth, and women above all, and the most precious gems, as diamonds or rubies, the thief deserves capital punishment.

324. ‘For stealing large beasts, weapons, or medicines, let the king inflict adequate punishment, considering the time and the act.

325. ‘For taking kine belonging to priests, and boring their nostrils, or for stealing their other cattle, the offender shall instantly lose half of one foot.

326. 'For stealing thread, raw-cotton, materials to make spirituous liquor, cow-dung, molasses, curds, milk, butter-milk, water, or grass,

327. 'Large canes, baskets of canes, salt of every kind, earthen pots, clay or ashes,

328. 'Fish, birds, oil, or clarified butter, flesh-meat, honey, or any thing, as leather, horn, or ivory, that came from a beast,

329. 'Or other things not precious, or spirituous liquors, rice dressed with clarified butter, or other messes of boiled rice, the fine must be twice the value of the commodity stolen.

330. ‘For stealing as much as a man can carry of flowers, green corn, shrubs, creepers, small trees, or other vegetables, enclosed by a hedge, the fine shall be five racticas of gold or silver;  

331. 'But for corn, pot-herbs, roots, and fruit, unenclosed by a fence, the fine is an hundred panas, if there be no sort of relation between the taker and the owner; or half a hundred if there be such relation.  

332. 'If the taking be violent, and in the sight of the owner, it is robbery; if privately in his absence, it is only theft, and it is considered as theft, when a man, having received any thing, refuses to give it back.

333. ‘On him who deals the before-mentioned things, when they are prepared for use, let the king let the lowest amercement of the three; and the same on him who steals only fire from the temple.

334. 'With whatever limb a thief commits the offence by any means in this world, as if he break a wall with his hand or his foot, even that limb shall the king amputate for the prevention of a similar crime.

335. 'Neither a father, nor a preceptor, nor a friend, nor a mother, nor a wife, nor a son, nor a domestick priest, must be left unpunished by the king, if they adhere not with firmness to their duty.

336. 'Where another man of lower birth would be fined one pana, the king shall be fined a thousand, and he shall give the fine to the priests, or cast it into the river: this is a sacred rule.

337. 'But the fine of a Sudra for theft shall be eight-fold; that of a Vaisya, sixteen-fold; that of a Cshatriya, two and thirty-fold.

338. 'That of a Brahmen, four and sixty-fold; or a hundred-fold complete, or even twice four and sixty-fold; each of them knowing the nature of his offence.

339. 'The taking of roots and fruit from a large tree, in a field or a forest unenclosed, or of wood for a sacrificial fire, or of grass to be eaten by cows, Menu has pronounced no theft.

340. 'A priest who willingly receives any thing, either for sacrificing or for instructing, from the hand of a man who had taken what the owner had not given, shall be punished, even as the thief.

341. 'A twice born man who is travelling, and whose provisions are scanty, shall not be fined for taking only two sugar canes, or two esculent roots, from the field of another man.

342. 'He who ties the unbound, or looses the bound cattle of another, and he who takes a slave, a horse, or a carriage without permission, shall be punished as for theft.

343. 'A king, who by enforcing these laws restrains men from committing theft, acquires in this world fame, and in the next beatitude.

344. 'Let not the king who ardently desires a seat with Indra, and wishes for glory, which nothing can change or diminish, endure for a moment the man who has committed atrocious violence, as by robbery, arson, or homicide.

345. 'He who commits great violence, must be considered as a more grievous offender than a defamer, a thief, or a striker with a staff:

346. 'That king who endures a man convicted of such atrocity, quickly goes to perdition, and incurs publick hate.

347. 'Neither on account of friendship, nor for the sake of great lucre, shall the king dismiss the perpetrators of violent acts, who spread terrour among all creatures.  

348. 'The twice born may take arms when their duty is obstructed by force; and when in some evil time a disaster has befallen the twice-born classes;

349. 'And in their own defence; and in a war for just cause; and in defence of a woman or a priest; he who kills justly, commits no crime.

350. 'Let a man without hesitation slay another, if he cannot otherwise escape, who assails him with intent to murder, whether young or old, or his preceptor, or a Brahmen deeply versed in the scripture.

351. 'By killing an assassin, who attempts to kill, whether in public or in private, no crime is committed by the slayer: fury recoils upon fury.

352. 'Men who commit overt-acts of adulterous inclinations for the wives of others, let the king banish from his realm, having punished them with such bodily marks as excite aversion;

353. 'Since adultery causes, to the general ruin, a mixture of classes among men: thence arises violation of duties; and thence is the root of felicity quite destroyed.

334. 'A man before noted for such an offence, who converses in secret with the wife of another, shall pay the first of the three usual amercements;

355. 'But a man, not before noted, who thus converses with her for some reasonable cause, shall pay no fine; since in him there is no transgression.

356. 'He, who talks with the wife of another man at a place of pilgrimage, in a forest or a grove, or at the confluence of rivers, incurs the guilt of an adulterous inclination:

357. 'To send her flowers or perfumes, to sport and jest with her, to touch her apparel and ornaments, to sit with her on the same couch, are held adulterous acts on his part;

338. 'To touch a married woman on her breasts or any other place, which ought not to be touched, or, being touched unbecomingly by her, to bear it complacently, are adulterous acts with mutual assent.

339. 'A man of the servile class, who commits actual adultery with the wife of a priest, ought to suffer death: the wives, indeed, or all the four classes must ever be most especially guarded.

360. 'Mendicants, encomiasts, men prepared for a sacrifice, and cooks and other artisans, are not prohibited from speaking to married women.

361. 'Let no man converse, after he has been forbidden, with the wives of others: he, who thus converses, after a husband or father has forbidden  him, shall pay a line of one suverna.

362. 'These laws relate not to the wives of publick dancers or singers, or of such base men as live by intrigues of their wives; men, who either carry women to others, or, lying concealed at home, permit them to hold a culpable intercourse:

363. 'Yet he, who has a private connexion with such women, or with servant-girls kept by one master, or with female anchorets of an heretical religion, shall be compelled to pay a small fine.

364 'He, who vitiates a damsel without her consent, shall suffer corporal punishment instantly; but he, who enjoys a willing damsel, shall not be corporally punished, if his class be the same with hers.

365. 'From a girl, who makes advances to a man of a high class, let not the king take the smallest fine; but her, who first addresses a low man, let him constrain to live in her house well guarded.

366. 'A low man, who makes love to a damsel of high birth, ought to be punished corporally; but he who addresses a maid of equal rank, shall give the nuptial present and marry her, if her father please.

367. 'Of the man, who through insolence forcibly contaminates a damsel, let the king instantly order two fingers to be amputated, and condemn him to pay a fine of six hundred panas:

368. 'A man of equal rank, who defiles a consenting damsel, shall not have his fingers amputated, but shall pay a fine of two hundred panas, to restrain him from a repetition of his offence.

369. 'A damsel polluting another damsel, must be fined two hundred panas, pay the double value of her nuptial present, and receive ten lashes with a whip;

370. 'But a woman, polluting a damsel, shall have her head instantly shaved, and two of her fingers chopped off; and shall ride, mounted on an ass, through the publick street.

371. 'Should a wife, proud of her family and the great qualities of her kinsmen, actually violate the duty which she owes to her lord, let the king condemn her to be devoured by dogs in a place much frequented;

372. 'And let him place the adulterer on an iron bed well heated, under which the executioners shall throw logs continually, till the sinful wretch be there burned to death.

373. 'Of a man once convicted, and a year after guilty of the same crime, the fine must be doubled: so it must if he be connected with the daughter of an outcast or with a Chandali woman.

374. 'A mechanick or servile man, having an adulterous connexion with a woman of a twice born class, whether guarded at home or unguarded, shall thus be punished; if she was un-guarded, he shall lose the part offending, and his whole substance; if guarded, and a priestess, every thing, even his life.

375. 'For adultery with a guarded priestess, a merchant shall forfeit all his wealth after imprisonment for a year; a soldier shall be fined a thousand panas, and be shaved with the urine of an ass:

376. 'But, if a merchant or a soldier commit adultery with a woman of the sacerdotal class, whom her husband guards not at home, the king shall only fine the merchant five hundred, and the soldier a thousand:

377. 'Both of them, however, if they commit that offence with a priestess not only guarded, but eminent for good qualities, shall be punished like men of the servile class, or be burned in a fire of dry grass or reeds.

378. 'A Brahmen, who carnally knows a guarded woman without her free will, must be fined a thousand panas, but only five hundred if he knew her with her free consent.

379. 'Ignominious torture is ordained, instead of capital punishment, for an adulterer of the priestly class, where the punishment of other classes may extend to loss of life.

380. 'Never shall the king slay a Brahmen though convicted of all possible crimes: let him banish the offender from his realm, but with all his property secure, and his body unhurt:

381. 'No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahmen; and the king, therefore, must not even form in his mind an idea of killing a priest.

382. 'If a merchant converse criminally with a guarded woman of the military, or a soldier with one of the mercantile class, they both deserve the same punishment as in the case of a priestess unguarded:

383. 'But a Brahmen, who shall commit adultery with a guarded woman of those two classes, must be fined a thousand panas; and, for the like offence with a guarded woman of the servile class, the fine of a soldier or a merchant shall also be one thousand.

384. 'For adultery with a woman of the military class, if unguarded, the fine of a merchant is five hundred; but a soldier, for the converse of that offence, must be shaved with urine, or pay the fine just mentioned.

385. 'A priest shall pay five hundred panas if he connect himself criminally with an unguarded woman of the military, commercial, or servile class; and a thousand for such a connexion with a woman of vile mixed breed.

386. 'That king, in whose realm lives no thief, no adulterer, no defamer, no man guilty of atrocious violence, and no committer of assaults, attains the mansion of Sacra.

387. 'By suppressing those five in his dominion, he gains royalty paramount over men of the same kingly rank, and spreads his fame through the world.

388. 'The sacrificer who forsakes the officiating priest, and the officiating priest who abandons the sacrificer, each being able to do his work, and guilty of no grievous offence, must each be fined a hundred panas.

3S9. 'A mother, a father, a wife, and a son, shall not be forsaken: he, who forsakes either of them, unless guilty of a deadly sin, shall pay six hundred panas as a fine to the king.

If a Father forsakes a Son, who has no Stain upon his Character, such as the Lost of Cast and such other disgraceful Circumstances, or if a Son, of his own accord, forsakes his Father, who has no Stain upon his Character, or if a Friend forsakes his Friend, who is without Blemish, or if a Brother forsakes a Brother, without Discovery of any Fault in him, or if a Husband forsakes his Wife, without Fault in her, then, if any of these, if both the Parties are unfit for Business, and have no Remedy but that of Separation, the Magistrate shall fine the forsaking Party One Hundred Puns of Cowries; if, without any Reason, but merely their own Choice, the one forsakes the other, the Magistrate shall fine him Two Hundred Puns of Cowries; if of the Two Parties one is fit for Business and the other unfit, then, if the unfit Person of his own Choice, quits the other, the Magistrate shall fine him Six Hundred Puns of Cowries.


390. 'Let not a prince, who seeks the good of his own soul, hastily and alone pronounce the law, on a dispute concerning any legal observance, among twice born men in their several orders;

391. 'But let him, after giving them due honour according to their merit, and, at first, having soothed them by mildness, apprise them of their duty with the assistance of Brahmens.

392. 'The priest who gives an entertainment to twenty men of the three first classes, without inviting his next neighbour, and his neighbour next but one, if both be worthy of an invitation, shall be fined one masha of silver.

393. 'A Brahmen of deep learning in the Veda who invites not another Brahmen, both learned and virtuous, to an entertainment given on some occasion relating to his wealth, as the marriage of his child, and the like, shall be made to pay him twice the value of the repast, and be fined a masha of gold.

If a Man doth not give a Carpet to sit on, to such Person as he ought to present with such a Seat, or doth not treat with proper Veneration a Person to whom Veneration is due, or who, neglecting a faultless Bramin in his Neighbourhood, invites a Bramin from a considerable Distance, or who, having invited any Person, doth not offer him any Thing to eat, or who, having accepted an Invitation, doth not go to the House whither he was invited accordingly, the Magistrate shall fine the Offender, in such Cases, One Masheh of Gold.


394. 'Neither a blind man, nor an idiot, nor a cripple, nor a man full seventy years old, nor one who confers great benefits on priests of eminent learning, shall be compelled by any king to pay taxes.

395. 'Let the king always do honour to a learned theologian, to a man either sick or grieved, to a little child, to an aged or indigent man, to a man of exalted birth, and to a man of distinguished virtue.

396. 'Let a washerman wash the clothes of his employers by little and little, or piece by piece, and not hastily, on a smooth board of Salmali-wood: let him never mix the clothes of one person with the clothes of another, nor suffer any but the owner to wear them.

397. 'Let a weaver who has received ten palas of cotton thread, give them back increased to eleven by the rice water and the like used in weaving: he who does otherwise, shall pay a fine of twelve panas.

398. 'As men versed in cases of tolls, and acquainted with all marketable commodities, shall establish the price of saleable things, let the king take a twentieth part of the profit on sales at that price.

399. 'Of the trader, who, through avarice, exports commodities, of which the king justly claims the pre-emption, or on which he has laid an embargo, let the sovereign confiscate the whole property.

400. ‘Any seller or buyer, who fraudulently passes by the toll office at night, or any other improper time, or who makes a false enumeration of the articles bought, shall be fined eight times as much as their value.

401. ‘Let the king establish rules for the sale and purchase of all marketable things, having duly considered whence they come, if imported; and, if exported, whither they must be sent; how long they have been kept; what may be gained by them; and what has been expended on them.

402. ‘Once in five nights, or at the close of every half month, according to the nature of the commodities, let the king make a regulation for market prices in the presence of those experienced men:

403. ‘Let all weights and measures be well ascertained by him; and once in six months let him re-examine them.

404. ‘The toll at a ferry is one pana for an empty cart; half a pana, for a man with a load; a quarter, for a beast used in agriculture, or for a woman; and an eighth, for an unloaded man.

405. ‘Waggons filled with goods packed up, shall pay toll in proportion to their value; but for empty vessels and bags, and for poor men ill-apparelled, a very small toll shall be demanded.

406. 'For a long passage, the freight must be proportioned to places and times; but this must be understood of passages up and down rivers: at sea there can be no settled freight.

407. ‘A woman, who has been two months pregnant, a religious beggar, a forester in the third order, and Brahmens, who are students in theology, shall not be obliged to pay toll for their passage.

408. ‘Whatever shall be broken in a boat, by the fault of the boatmen, shall be made good by those men collectively, each paying his portion.

409. ‘This rule, ordained for such as pass rivers in boats, relates to the culpable neglect of boatmen on the water: in the case of inevitable accident, there can be no damages recovered.

410. 'The king should order each man of the mercantile class to practise trade, or money-lending, or agriculture and attendance on cattle; and each man of the servile class to act in the service of the twice born.

411. 'Both him of the military, and him of the commercial class, if distressed for a livelihood, let some wealthy Brahmen support, obliging them without harshness to discharge their several duties.

412. 'A Brahmen, who, by his power and through avarice, shall cause twice born men, girt with the sacrificial thread, to perform servile acts, such as washing his feet, without their consent, shall be fined by the king six hundred panas;

413. 'But a man of the servile class whether bought or unbought, he may compel to perform servile duty; because such a man was created by the Self-existent for the purpose of serving Brahmens:

414. 'A Sudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from a state of servitude; for of a state which is natural to him, by whom can he be divested?

415. 'There are servants of seven sorts; one made captive under a standard or in battle, one maintained in consideration of service, one born of a female slave in the house, one sold, or given, or inherited from ancestors, and one enslaved by way of punishment on his inability to pay a large fine.

416. 'Three persons, a wife, a son, and a slave, are declared by law to have in general no wealth exclusively their own: the wealth, which they may earn, is regularly acquired for the man to whom they belong.

417. 'A Brahmen may seize without hesitation, if he be distressed for a subsistence, the goods of his Sudra slave; for as that slave can have no property, his master may take his goods.

418. ‘With vigilant care should the king exert himself in compelling merchants and mechanicks to perform their respective duties; for when such men swerve from their duty, they throw this world into confusion.

419. ‘Day by day must the king, though engaged in ferensick business, consider the great objects of publick measures, and inquire into the state of his carriages, elephants, horses, and cars, his constant revenues and necessary expences, his mines of precious metals or gems, and his treasury:

420. ‘Thus, bringing to a conclusion all these weighty affairs, and removing from his realm and from himself every taint of sin, a king reaches the supreme path of beatitude.’  
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