Khettri he gave in charge the whole human race. With the value of all the precious gems and pearls with which India abounds, with the produce alfo of all foreign regions, with the correct modes of measuring and weighing, with the excellence or defects of all vendible commodities, and the means of breeding cattle with large augmentation, the Vaisya ought to be intimately acquainted, for they are the occupations allotted him by the irrevocable voice of destiny. He muft also be converfant in various dialects, muft erect warehouses, safe and fubftantial, for the different articles of commerce; he must be inceffantly vigilant, and may even indulge a folicitude for wealth, fo far as that folicitude does not ftint his benevolence to fentient creatures. In respect to the SUDRA, he must be content to ferve; that is his unalterable doom. To serve in the family of a Brahmin is the highest glory of a a Sudra, and leads him to certain beatitude. He muft, in that humble capacity, in a particular manner, study purity both of body and mind; be mild in fpeech, and patient of la bour; this will fecure him a more eminent clafs in another tranfmigration.

CHAP.

CHA P. X.

On the mixed Claffes, and on Men's Duty in Times of public Distress.

The tenth chapter of the code is neither very long nor very important; the first part has reference to the genealogy of the tribes, and the purity of their blood. In proportion as they marry in the tribes below them, (for, a Brahmin may have a wife from each tribe,) the fons bear the ftamp of degradation if he takes one from the Khettri tribe, he is degraded in the first degree; if from the Vaifya, in the fecond; and fo on. An endless enumeration of inftances of this kind follows through all the various claffes; their duties are stated and their occupations fixed, fince, in fact, thofe born of mixed blood belong to no original clafs, and confequently can have no appointed profeffion. A picturefque defcription of the miseries of the CHANDALAH, or outcaft tribe, fucceeds, I prefume, in terrorem to the others. It is ordained that they exift remote from their - fellow-creatures amidst the filth and dirt of the fuburbs; their fole wealth must

i

confift

;

confift in dogs and affes; their clothes muft be the polluted mantles of the deceased their dishes for food, broken broken pots; their ornaments, rusty iron; their food must be given them in potfherds at a distance, that the giver may not be defiled by the fhade of their outcaft bodies; their bufinefs is to -carry out the corpfes of those who die without kindred; they are the public executioners; and the whole that they can be heir to are the clothes and other wretched property of the flain malefactor. A great many other particulars of this exiled tribe are added by other authors, which I have elsewhere enumerated and they form, themselves, no weak proof of the unrelenting fpirit of the Hindoo code, that could thus doom a vast class of people, a fifth of the nation, to unpitied, perhaps unmerited, wretchedness. An Indian, in his bigotted attachment to the Metempfychofis, would fly to fave the life of a noxious reptile; but, were a Chandalah falling down a precipice, he would not extend his hand to fave him. from perdition.

The fecond portion of this chapter difcuffes the queftion how, in times of great adverfity

adverfity or diftrefs, the individuals of the four tribes, unable to subsist on their usual occupation, are to obtain a maintenance. A Brahmin, it is determined, unable to live by the duties of his profeffion, may even take up arms and become a foldier ; or he may enter into commerce, and subfift as a mercantile man, or finally, if abfolutely neceffary, by tillage and attending cattle. A great many more reftrictions, bowever, are laid upon the Brahmin, thus occupied, on account of his purer character, than on the foldier, the merchant, and the herdsman, engaged in their native employ; many articles used in war and commerce being abfolutely forbidden bim even to touch, which are familiar to them. A Khettri, or military man, in distress, may fubfift by all these means in the descending fcale; but he must never afpire to the honours of the facerdotal function. The mercantile man and the Sudra may, in the fame manner, deviate from their own immediate line of life; but nothing of this kind is to be done without urgent and indifpenfable neceffity, fince it immediately breaks in upon the fublime laws of Brah

ma,

ma, inftituted at the beginning of time and violates the eternal order of the Indian cafts.

CHAP. XI.

On Penance and Expiation.

A confiderable portion of the rules and precepts laid down in this chapter is a mere repetition of those inculcated in the fixth chapter, or that on DEVOTION: fome are very fevere, and others even ludicroust What is new on the fubject need only be noticed amidst the terrible difplay which it exhibits of expiatory tortures. These ex

a

piations, however, are not always by corporeal punishment; they may be compounded for by high fines paid to the gods, and their vicegerents the Brahmins. The flayer of a Brahmin undefignedly, if he be of the military tribe, muft expofe himfelf to be fhot to death by archers, or caft himfelf headlong thrice into a blazing fire. He, who has intentionally drunk inebriating liquor, may expiate his crime by swallowing fpirit on flame, or by feverely burning his body. For ftealing from a Brahmin, he VOL. VII.

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muft