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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
a thwé-thauk, and according to Judson's Burmese Dictionary, a band of fifty men is also called a thwé-thauk.
No doubt the origin of the custom may be traced to a society, whose government and domestic relations were loosely organized, and which naturally, in all matters affecting life and property, gave preference to might rather than to right. In such a society, the sacred ties of affection, due to consanguinity, required to be strengthened and supplemented by an external ceremony, based on
BOOK-NOTICE.
THE MINOR LAW-Books, translated by JULIUS JOLLY. Part I. Narada and Brihaspati. (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXXIII.) Oxford, 1889. 8vo. pp. xxiv., 391.
Though in the series advertised to the public as "Sacred Books of the East" the sacred books
of India have hitherto been conspicuous by their absence, the knowledge of Hindu law has been advanced to a large extent by the translations of Smriti-texts that were contributed by the two leading authorities, Professors Bühler and Jolly. The new volume which the latter scholar has brought out, contains annotated translations of two very important law-books. Both are professedly based on Manu, but anterior to his commentator
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Mêdhâtithi. Professor Jolly assigns Narada to the fifth or sixth, and Brihaspati to the sixth or seventh centuries A. D. Narada's is the only Smriti, completely preserved in MSS., in which law, properly so-called, is treated by itself, without any reference to rules of penance, diet, and other religious subjects.' Of special value to Hindu reformers is the following text of Narada (p. 184 f. of Professor Jolly's translation):
"When her husband is lost (i. e. gone no one knows whither) or dead, when he has become a religious ascetic, when he is impotent, and when he has been expelled from caste: these are the five cases of legal necessity, in which a woman may be justified in taking another husband."
[DECEMBER, 1891.
superstition, for the purpose of defending or advancing the interests of the commonwealth. In primitive man the amount of self-control is not
sufficient to keep the rising passions in check, and hence a banding together or an agglomeration of buman units is required to resist aggression or to invade the rights of others. Nowhere is the motto Union is strength more rigidly followed than in a state of society, where moral force is powerless against physical force.
TAW SEIN Ko.
Unlike Narada's, the Smriti of Brihaspati appears. to have treated of the whole sacred law, but is not preserved in MSS. Professor Jolly has collected from quotations in later law-books, and arranged under their proper headings, all those fragments of Brihaspati which refer to law in its proper sense, a laborious and difficult task, which few could have performed so well. If the footnotes did not draw attention to the sources
1 The reading matapitror atmanas cha punyoya (Dr. Burnell's 8.-I. Palæography, p. 97), for the merit of my parents and of myself,' is in better accordance with the wording of the grants themselves.
1 It seems preferable to explain samdhivigraha
from which the single passages are taken, the reader might feel inclined to consider the text as a complete treatise on Hindu law. The chapter on documents (VIII.) contains the subjoined interesting note on royal edicts, which is quoted from Brihaspati in the Viramitródaya (p. 305 f. of
Professor Jolly's translation):
"12. Having given a tract of land or the like, the king should cause a formal grant (éâsana) to be executed on a copper-plate or a piece of cloth, stating the place (of issue), the ancestors (of the king), and other particulars,
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13. And the names of (the king's) mother and father, and of the king himself, (and containing the statement that) This grant has been made by me to-day to N. N., the son of N. N., who belongs to the Vedic school N. N.,
.
"14. As being endurable while the moon and sun last, and as descending by right of inheritance to the son, grandson, and more remote descendants, and as a gift which must never be cut down or taken away, and is entirely exempt from diminution (by the allotment of shares to the king's attendants, and so forth),
15. Conveying paradise on the giver and preserver, and hell on the taker, for a period of sixty thousand years, as the (respective) recompense for giving and taking (the land).'
"16. (Thus the king should declare in the grant), the secretaries for peace and war signing the grant with the remark: I know this (jñdtam mayd).'
"17. (The grant) should be provided with (the king's) own seal (mudrá), and with a precise statement of the year, month and so forth, of the value (of the donation), and of the magistrate." Such a document issued by the king is called a royal edict (éasana)."
Wkhakaiḥ as an inaccurate expression, caused by the metre, instead of samdhirigrahika-khakabhyam.
The term adhyaksha appears to correspond to the dataka or djñapti of the grants.
