species of employment; an arrangement which, in BOOK II. the very simple state of society in which it must have CHAP. 2. been introduced, was a great step in improvement, must have become productive of innumerable inconveniences, as the wants of society multiplied. The bare necessaries of life, with a small number of its rudest accommodations, are all it prepares, to meet the desires of man. As those desires, speedily extend beyond such narrow limits, a struggle must have early ensued between the first principle of human nature and those of the political establishment. The different castes were strictly commanded to marry with those only of their own class and profession; and the mixture of the classes from the union of the sexes was guarded against by the severest laws. This was an occurrence, however, which laws could not prevent. Irregularities took place; children were born, who belonged to no caste, and for whom there was no occupation. No event could befal society more calamitous than this. Unholy and infamous, on account of that violation of the sacred law to which they owed their unwelcome birth, those wretched outcasts had no resource for subsistence, excepting either the bounty of the established classes, to whom they were objects of execration and abhorrence; or the plunder of those same classes, a course to which they would betake themselves with all the ingenuity of necessitous, and all the atrocity of much injured, men. When a class of this description became numerous, they must have filled society with the greatest disorders. In the preface of that compilation of the Hindu Laws, which was translated by Mr. Halhed,' it is stated that, after a succession of good kings, who secured obedience to the laws,

Vide Halhed's Code of Gentoo Laws, preface,

A

BOOK II. and under whom the people enjoyed felicity, came a
CHAP. 2. monarch evil and corrupt, under whom the laws

were violated, the mixture of the classes was perpe-
trated, and a new and impious race were produced..
The Brahmens put this wicked king to death, and
by an effort of miraculous power created a successor
endowed with the most excellent qualities. But
the kingdom did not prosper, by reason of the Bur-
ren Sunker, so were this impure brood denominated;
and it required the wisdom of this virtuous king to
devise a remedy. He resolved upon a classification
of the mixed race, and to assign them occupations.
This, accordingly, was the commencement of arts
and manufactures. The Burren Sunker became all
manner of artisans and handicrafts; one tribe of
them weavers of cloth, another artificers in iron, and
so in other cases, till the subdivisions of the class
were exhausted, or the exigencies of the community
supplied. Thus were remedied two evils at once:
The increasing wants of an improving society were
provided for; and a class of men, the pest of
the community, were converted to its service.
is another important era in the history of Hindu
society; and having reached this stage, it does not
appear that it has made, or that it is capable of mak-
ing, much further progress. Thirty-six branches of
the impure class are specified in the sacred books,'
of whom and of their employments it would be
tedious and useless to present the description. The
highest is that sprung from the conjunction of a
Brahmen with a woman of the Cshatriya class,

This

1 Colebrooke on the Indian Classes, Asiat. Research. v. 53. On this subject, however, that intelligent author tells us, that Sanscrit authorities in some instances disagree. Classes mentioned by one are omitted by another; and texts differ on the professions assigned to sonre tribes. It is a subject, he adds, in which there is some intricacy.

СНАР. 2.

whose duty is the teaching of military exercises. BOOK II. The lowest of all is the offspring of a Sudra with a woman of the sacred class. This tribe are denominated Chandalas, and are regarded with great abhorrence. Their profession is to carry out corpses, to execute criminals, and perform other offices, reckoned to the last degree unclean and degrading. If, by the laws of Hindustan, the Sudras are placed in a low and vile situation, the impure and mixed classes are placed in one still more odious and degrading. Nothing can equal the contempt and insolence to which it is the lot of the lowest among them to see themselves exposed. They are condemned to live in a sequestered spot by themselves, that they may not pollute the very town in which they reside. If they meet a man of the higher castes, they must turn out of the way, lest he should be contaminated by their presence.

"Avoid," says the Tantra, "the touch of the Chandala, and other abject classes. Whoever associates with them undoubtedly falls from his class; whoever bathes or drinks in wells or pools which they have caused to be made, must be purified by the five productions of kine." Colebrooke on the Indian Classes, Asiat. Research. v. 53. From this outline of the classification and distribution of the people, as extracted from the books of the Hindus, some of the most intelligent of our British observers appeal to the present practice of the people, which they affirm is much more conformable to the laws of human welfare, than the institutions described in the ancient books. Of this, the author is aware: so inconsistent with the laws of human welfare are the institutions described in the Hindu ancient books, that they never could have been observed with any accuracy; it is, at the same time, very evident, that the institutions described in the ancient books are the model upon which the present frame of Hindu society has been formed; and when we consider the powerful causes which have operated so long to draw, or rather to force, the Hindus from their inconvenient institutions and customs, the only source of wonder is, that the state of society which they now exhibit should hold so great a resemblance to that which is depicted in their books. The President de Goguet is of opinion, that a division of the people into tribes and hereditary professions similar to that of the Hindus existed in the ancient Assyrian empire, and that it prevailed from the highest antiquity over almost all Asia,

BOOK II. (part I. book I. ch.i. art. 3; Herodot. lib. i. cap. 200; Strab. lib. xi. CHAP. 2. p. 1082; Diod. lib. ii. p. 142.) Cecrops distributed into four tribes all

the inhabitants of Attica. (Pollux, lib. viii. cap. 9. sect. 100; Diodorus Siculus, lib. ii. p 33.) Theseus afterwards made them three, by uniting, as it should seem, the sacerdotal class with that of the nobles, or magistrates. They consisted then of nobles and priests, labourers or husbandmen, and artificers; and there is no doubt that, like the Egyp tians and Indians, they were hereditary. (Plutarch. Vit. Thes.) Aristotle expressly informs us, (Polit. lib. vii. cap. 10.) that in Crete the people were divided by the laws of Minos into classes after the manner of the Egyptians. We have most remarkable proof of a division, the same as that of the Hindus, anciently established among the Persians In the Zendavesta, translated by Anquetil Duperron, is the following passage: "Ormusd said, There are three measures [literally weights, that is, tests, rules] of conduct, four states, and five places of dignity. -The states are: that of the priest; that of the soldier; that of the husbandman, the source of riches; and that of the artizan or labourer.” Zendavesta, i. 141. There are sufficient vestiges to prove an ancient establishment of the same sort among the Buddhists of Ceylon, and by consequence to infer it among the other Buddhists over so large a portion of Asia. See a Discourse of Mr. Joinville on the Religion and Manners of the people of Ceylon, Asiat. Research. vii. 430, et seq.

CHAP. III.

The Form of Government.

AFTER the division of the people into ranks and oc- BOOK II. cupations, the great circumstance by which their CHAP. 3. condition, character, and operations are determined, is the political establishment; the system of actions by which the social order is preserved. Among the Hindus, according to the Asiatic model, the government was monarchical, and, with the usual exception of religion and its ministers, absolute. No idea of any system of rule, different from the will of a single person, appears to have entered the minds of them, or their legislators. "If the world had no king," says the Hindu law,' "it would quake on all sides through fear; the ruler of this universe, therefore, created a king, for the maintenance of this system." Of the high and uncontrolable authority of the monarch a judgment may be formed, from the lofty terms in which the sacred books describe his dignity and attributes. "A king," says the law of Menu," " is formed of particles from the chief guardian deities, and consequently surpasses all mortals in glory. Like the sun, he burns eyes and hearts; nor can any human creature on earth even gaze on him. He, fire and air; He, the god of criminal justice; He, the genius of wealth; He, the regent of waters; He, the lord of the firmament. A king, even though a child, must