unbought, he may compel to perform servile duty; because such a man was created by the Self-existent for the purpose of serving Bráhmens:

414. A Súdra, 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 Bráhmen may seize without hesitation, if he be distressed for a subsistence, the goods of his Súdra-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 forensick business, consider the great objects of publick measures, and enquire 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.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE SAME; AND ON THE COMMERCIAL AND SERVILE CLASSES.

1. I Now will propound the immemorial duties of man and woman, who must both remain firm in the legal path, whether united or separated.

2. Day and night must women be held by their protectors in a state of dependence; but in lawful and innocent recreations, though rather addicted to them, they may be left at their own disposal.

3. Their fathers protect them in childhood; their husbands protect them in youth; their sons protect them in age: a woman is never fit for independence.

4. Reprehensible is the father, who gives not his daughter in marriage at the proper time; and the husband, who approaches not his wife in due season; reprehensible also is the son, who protects not his mother after the death of her lord.

5. Women must, above all, be restrained from the smallest illicit gratification; for, not being thus restrained, they bring sorrow on both families:

6. Let husbands consider this as the supreme law ordained for all classes; and let them, how weak soever, diligently keep their wives under lawful restrictions;

7. For he who preserves his wife from vice, preserves his offspring from suspicion of bastardy, his ancient usages from neglect, his family from disgrace, himself from anguish, and his duty from violation.

8. The husband, after conception by his wife, becomes him self an embryo, and is born a second time here below; for

which reason the wife is called jáyá, since by her (jáyaté) he is born again :

9. Now the wife brings forth a son, endued with similar qualities to those of the father; so that, with a view to an excellent offspring, he must vigilantly guard his wife.

10. No man, indeed, can wholly restrain women by violent measures; but, by these expedients, they may be restrained: 11. Let the husband keep his wife employed in the collection and expenditure of wealth, in purification and female duty, in the preparation of daily food, and the superintendence of household utensils.

12. By confinement at home, even under affectionate and observant guardians, they are not secure; but those women are truly secure, who are guarded by their own good inclinations.

13. Drinking spirituous liquor, associating with evil persons, absence from her husband, rambling abroad, unseasonable sleep, and dwelling in the house of another, are six faults which bring infamy on a married woman:

14. Such women examine not beauty, nor pay attention to age; whether their lover be handsome or ugly, they think it is enough that he is a man, and pursue their pleasures.

15. Through their passion for men, their mutable temper, their want of settled affection, and their perverse nature (let them be guarded in this world ever so well), they soon become alienated from their husbands.

16. Yet should their husbands be diligently careful in guarding them; though they well know the disposition, with which the lord of creation formed them:

17. MENU allotted to such women a love of their bed, of their seat, and of ornament, impure appetites, wrath, weak flexibility, desire of mischief, and bad conduct.

18. Women have no business with the texts of the Véda; thus is the law fully settled: having, therefore, no evidence of law, and no knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful women must be as foul as falsehood itself; and this is a fixed rule. 19. To this effect many texts, which may show their true disposition, are chanted in the Védas: hear now their expiation for sin.

20"That pure blood, which my mother defiled by adulterous desire, frequenting the houses of other men, and violating her duty to her lord, that blood may my father purify!" Such is the tenour of the holy text, which her son, who knows her guilt must pronounce for her;

21. And this expiation has been declared for every unbecoming thought, which enters her mind, concerning infidelity to her husband; since that is the beginning of adultery.

22. Whatever be the qualities of the man, with whom a woman is united by lawful marriage, such qualities even she assumes; like a river united with the sea.

23. ACSHAMA LA', a woman of the lowest birth, being thus united to VASISHT'HA, and SA'RANGI, being united to MANDAPAʼLA, were entitled to very high honour:

24. These, and other females of low birth, have attained eminence in this world by the respective good qualities of their lords.

25. Thus has the law, ever pure, been propounded for the civil conduct of men and women: hear, next, the laws concerning children, by obedience to which may happiness be attained in this and the future life.

26. WHEN good women, united with husbands in expectation of progeny, eminently fortunate and worthy of reverence, irradiate the houses of their lords, between them and goddesses of abundance there is no diversity whatever.

27. The production of children, the nurture of them, when produced, and the daily superintendance of domestick affairs are peculiar to the wife:

28. From the wife alone proceed offspring, good household management, solicitous attention, most exquisite caresses, and that heavenly beatitude which she obtains for the manes of ancestors, and for the husband himself.

29. She, who deserts not her lord, but keeps in subjection to him her heart, her speech, and her body, shall attain his mansion in heaven, and, by the virtuous in this world, be called Sadhwì or good and faithful;

30. But a wife, by disloyalty to her husband, shall incur disgrace in this life, and be born in the next from the womb

of a shakal, or be tormented with horrible diseases, which punish vice.

31. LEARN now that excellent law, universally salutary, which was declared, concerning issue, by great and good sages formerly born.

32. They consider the male issue of a woman as the son of the lord; but, on the subject of that lord, a difference of opinion is mentioned in the Véda; some giving that name to the real procreator of the child, and others applying it to the married possessor of the woman.

33. The woman is considered in law as the field, and the man as the grain: now vegetable bodies are formed by the united operation or the seed and the field.

34. In some cases the prolifick power of the male is chiefly distinguished; in others, the receptacle of the female; but, when both are equal in dignity, the offspring is most highly esteemed:

35. In general, as between the male and female powers of procreation, the male is held superiour; since the offspring of all procreant beings is distinguished by marks of the male power.

36. Whatever be the quality of seed, scattered in a field prepared in due season, a plant of the same quality springs in that field, with peculiar visible properties.

37. Certainly this earth is called the primeval womb of many beings; but the seed exhibits not in its vegetation any properties of the womb.

38. On earth here below, even in the same ploughed field, seeds of many different forms, having been sown by husbandmen in the proper season, vegetate according to their nature:

39. Rice-plants, mature in sixty days, and those, which require transplantation, mudga, tila, másha, barley, leaks, and sugar-canes, all spring up according to the seeds.

40. That one plant should be sown, and another produced, cannot happen: whatever seed may be sown, even that produces its proper stem.

41. Never must it be sown in another man's field by him, who has natural good sense, who has been well instructed,