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sited the public markets and examined weights and measures. The third class of officers superintended the military department; but, as the objects to which their attention was directed are foreign from the subject of my inquiries, it is unnecessary to enter into any detail with respect to them.*

As manners and customs in India descend almost without variation from age to age, many of the peculiar institutions which I have enumerated still subsist there. There is still the same attention to the con

struction and preservation of tanks, and the distribution of their waters. The direction of roads, and placing stones along them, is still an object of police. Choultries, or houses built for the accommodation of travellers are frequent in every part of the country, and are useful as well as noble monuments of Indian munificence and humanity. It is only among men in the most improved state of society, and under the best forms of government, that we discover institutions similar to those which I have described; and many nations have advanced far in their progress, without establishing an arrangement of police equally perfect. In estimating the progress which any nation has made in civilization, the object that merits the greatest degree of attention, next to its political constitution, is the spirit of the laws, and nature of the forms by which its judicial proceedings are regulated. In the early and rude ages of society, the few disputes with respect to property which arise, are terminated by the interposition of the old men, or by the au

thority of the chiefs in every small tribe or community; their decisions are dictated by their own discretion, or founded on plain and obvious maxims of equity. But as controversies multiply, cases similar to such as have been formerly determined must recur, and the awards upon these grow gradually into precedents, which serve to regulate future judgements. Thus, long before the nature of property is defined by positive statutes, or any rules prescribed concerning the mode of acquiring or conveying it, there is gradually formed, in every state, abody of customary or common law, by which judicial proceedings are directed, and every decision conformable to it is submitted to with reverence, as the result of the accumulated wisdom and experience of ages.

In this state, the administration of justice seems to have been in India when first visited by Europeans. Though the Indians, according to their account, had no written laws, but determined every controverted point, by recollecting what had been formerly decided; +they assert, that justice was dispensed among them with great accuracy, and that crimes were most severely punished. But in this general observation is contained all the intelligence which the ancients furnish concerning the nature and forms of judicial proceedings in India. From the time of Megasthenes, no Greek or Roman of any note appears to have resided long enough in the country, or to have been so much acquainted with the customs of the natives, as to be capable of entering into any detail

* Strabo, lib. xv. p. 1034. A. &c. Diod. Sicul. lib ii. p. 354.
+ Strabo, lib. xv 1035. D.
Diod. Sicul. lib ii. p. 154.

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rupt his labours, or endanger his property. It was not uncommon, we are informed, that while two hostile armies were fighting a battle in one field, the peasants were ploughing or reaping in the next field in perfect tranquillity. These maxims and regulations of the ancient legislators of India have anear resemblance to the system of those ingenious modern speculators on political economy, who represent the produce of land as the sole source of wealth in every country, and who consider the discovery of this principle, according to which they contend, that the government of nations should be conducted, as one of the greatest efforts of human wisdom. Under a form of government, which paid such attention to all the different orders of which the society is composed, particularly the cultivators of the earth, it is not wonderful that the ancients should describe the Indians as a most happy race of men; and that the most intelligent modern observers should celebrate the equity, the humanity, and mildness, of Indian policy. A Hindoo rajah, as I have been in formed by persons well acquainted with the state of India, resembles more a father presiding in a numerous family of his own children, than a sovereign ruler over inferiors, subject to his dominion. He endeavours to secure their happiness with vigilant solicitude; they are attached to him with the most tender affection and inviolable fidelity. We can hardly conceive men to be placed in any state more favorable to their acquiring all the advantages derived from social union, It is

only when the mind is perfectly at

ease and neither feels nor dreads oppression, that it employs its active powers in forming numerous arrangements of police, for securing its enjoyments and increasing them. Many arrangements of this nature the Greeks, though accustomed to their own institutions, the most perfect at that time in Europe, observed and admired among the Indians, and mention them as instances of high civilization and improvement. There were established among the Indians three distinct classes of officers, one of which had it in charge to inspect agriculture, and every kind of country work. They measured the portions of land allotted to each renter. They had the custody of the Tanks, or public reservoirs of water, without a regular distribution of which, the fields in

a torrid climate cannot be rendered fertile. They marked out the course of the highways, along which, at certain distances, they erected stones, to measure the road and direct travellers. To officers of a second class was committed the inspection of the police in cities, and their functions, of course, were many and various; some of which only 1 shall specify. They appropriated houses for the reception of strangers; they protected them from injury, provided for their subsistence, and, when seized with any disease, they appointed physicians to attend them; and, on the event of their death, they not only buried them with decency, but took charge of their ef fects, and restored them to their relations. They kept exact registers of births and of deaths. They vi

* Strab. lib. xv. p. 1030. A.

sited

sited the public markets and examined weights and measures. The third class of officers superintended the military department; but, as the objects to which their attention was directed are foreign from the subject of my inquiries, it is unnecessary to enter into any detail with respect to them.*

As manners and customs in India descend almost without variation from age to age, many of the pecu

liar

institutions which I have enumerated still subsist there. There is still the same attention to the con

struction and preservation of tanks, and the distribution of their waters. The direction of roads, and placing stones along them, is still an object of police. Choultries, or houses built for the accommodation of travellers are frequent in every part of the country, and are useful as well as noble monuments of Indian munificence and humanity. It is only among men in the most improved state of society, and under the best forms of government, that we discover institutions similar to those which I have described; and many nations have advanced far in their progress, without establishing an arrangement of police equally perfect. In estimating the progress which any nation has made in civilization, the object that merits the greatest degree of attention, next to its political constitution, is the spirit of the laws, and nature of the forms by which its judicial proceedings are regulated. In the early and rude ages of society, the few disputes with respect to property which arise, are terminated by the interposition of the old men, or by the au

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thority of the chiefs in every small tribe or community; their decisions are dictated by their own discretion, or founded on plain and obvious maxims of equity. But as controversies multiply, cases similar to such as have been formerly determined must recur, and the awards upon these grow gradually into precedents, which serve to regulate future judgements. Thus, long before the nature of property is defined by positive statutes, or any rules prescribed concerning the mode of acquiring or conveying it, there is gradually formed, in every state, a body of customary or common law, by which judicial proceedings are directed, and every decision conformable to it is submitted to with reverence, as the result of the accumulated wisdom and experience of ages.

In this state, the administration of justice seems to have been in India when first visited by Europeans. Though the Indians, according to their account, had no written laws, but determined every controverted point, by recollecting what had been formerly decided; +they assert, that justice was dispensed among them with great accuracy, and that crimes were most severely punished. But in this general observation is contained all the intelligence which the ancients furnish concerning the nature and forms of judicial proceedings in India. From the time of Megasthenes, no Greek or Roman of any note appears to have resided long enough in the country, or to have been so much acquainted with the customs of the natives, as to be capable of entering into any detail

Strabo, lib. xv. p. 1034. A. &c. Diod. Sicul. lib ii. p. 354.
+ Strabo, lib. xv 1035. D.
Diod. Sicul. lib ii. p. 154.

with

with respect to a point of so much importance in their policy. Fortunately, the defects of their information have been amply supplied by the more accurate and extensive researches of the moderns. During the course of almost three centuries, the number of persons who have re⚫ sorted from Europe to India has been great. Many of them, who have remained long in the country, and were persons of liberal education and enlarged minds, have lived in such familiar intercourse with the natives, and acquired so competent a knowledge of their languages, as enabled them to observe their institutions with attention, and to describe them with fidelity. Respectable as their authority may be, I shall not, in what I offer for illustrating the judicial proceedings of the Hindoos, rest upon it alone, but shall derive my information from sources higher and more pure.

Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, Akber, the sixth in descent from Tamerlane, mounted the throne of Indostan. He is one of the few sovereigns intitled to the appellation both of great and good, and the only one of Mahomedan race, whose mind appears to have risen so far above all the illiberal prejudices of that fanatical religion in which he was educated, as to be capable of forming a plan worthy of a monarch who loved his people, and was solicitous to render them happy. As, in every province of his extensive dominions, the Hindoos formed the great body of his subjects, he laboured to acquire a perfect knowledge of their religion, their sciences, their laws and institu

• Ayeen Akbery. A. vol. iii. p. 95. + Vol. iii, p. 197, &c. A. D. 1773.

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tions; in order that he might conduct every part of his government, particularly the administration of justice, in a manner as much accommodated as possible to their own ideas. In this generous undertaking he was seconded with zeal by his vizier Abul Fazel, a minister, whose understanding was not less enlightened than that of his master. By their assiduous researches, and consultation of learned men,* such information was obtained as enabled Abul Fazel to publish a brief compendium of Hindoo jurisprudence in the Ayeen Akbery,t which may be considered as the first genuine communication of its principles to persons of a different religion. About two centuries afterwards, the illustrious example of Akber was imitated and surpassed by Mr. Hastings, the governor general of the British settlements in India. By his authority, and under his inspection, the most eminent Pundits, or Brahmins learned in the laws, of the provinces over which he presided, were assembled at Calcutta; and, in the course of two years, compiled, from their most ancient and approved authors, sentence by sentence, without addition or diminution, a full code of Hindoo laws; which is, undoubtedly, the most valuable and authentic elucidation of Indian policy and manners that has been hitherto communicated to Europe.

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succession of expounders of their laws from that period to the present. Without entering into any examination of what is so extravagant, we may conclude, that the Hindoos have in their possession treatises, concerning the laws and jurisprudence of their country, of more remote antiquity than are to be found in any other nation. The truth of this depends not upon their own testimony alone, but it is put beyond doubt by one circumstance, that all these treatises are written in the Sanskreet language, which has not been spoken for many ages in any part of Indostan, and is now understood by none but the most learned Brahmins. That the Hindoos were a people highly civilized, at the time when their laws were composed, is most clearly established by internal evidence contained in the Code itself. Among nations beginning to emerge from barbarism, the regulations of law are extremely simple, and applicable only to a few obvious cases of daily occurrence. Men must have been long united in a social state,their transactions must have been numerous and complex, and judges must have determined an immense variety of controversies to which these give rise, before the system of law becomes so voluminous and comprehensive as to direct the judicial proceedings of a nation far advanced in improvement. In that early age of the Roman republic, when the laws of the Twelve Tables were promulgated, nothing more was required than the laconic injunctions which they contain for regulating the decisions of courts of justice; but, in a later period, the body of civil law, ample as its contents are, was found hardly sufficient for that purpose. To the jejune

brevity of the Twelve Tables, the Hindoo Code has no resemblance, but with respect to the number and variety of points it considers, it will bear a comparison with the celebrated digest of Justinian; or with the systems of jurisprudence in nations most highly civilized. The articles of which the Hindoo Code is composed, are arranged in natural and luminous order. They are numerous and comprehensive, and investigated with that minute atten'tion and discernment which are natural to a people distinguished for acuteness and subtilty of understanding, who have been long accustomed to the accuracy of judicial proceedings, and acquainted with all the refinements of legal practice. The decisions concerning every point (with a few exceptions occasioned by local prejudices and peculiar customs) are founded upon the great and immutable principles of justice which the human mind acknowledges and respects, in every age, and in all parts of the earth. Whoever examines the whole work, cannot entertain a doubt of its containing the jurisprudence of an enlightened and commercial people. Whoever looks into any particular title, will be surprised with a minuteness of detail and nicety of distinction, which, in many instances, seem to go beyond the attention of European legislation; and it is remarkable that some of the regulations which indicate the greatest degree of refinement, were established in periods of the most remote antiquity. "In the first of the sacred law tracts (as is observed by a person to whom ori. ental literature, in all its branches, has been greatly indebted,) which the Hindoos suppose to have been

revealed

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