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114
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
MAY, 1912
Even the tribunal of the caste, with its limited jurisdiction, is not without antecedents. The Ancient family has . Cuancil which in Rome, Greece or Germany, surrounds and assists the father on important occasions, notably when it is the question of judging a culpable son. The exclusion from the family is a parallel to the exclusion from the caste. On both sides it is equivalent to an excommunication which, under its most dreaded form, is expressed in Latin with the qualification of sacer.50 It produces, with the Romans, a religious and civil situation very analogous to that of the outcaste. of the palita Hindu. The Latin gens acknowledges a chief who judges the quarrels between its members. Similarly to the caste, the gentes take decisions which are respected by the city ;51 just like the castes, they follow particular customs which are binding upon their members.52
On their part, some Vedic families are distinguished by certain ceremonies, by a predilection for certain divinities,68 in which there seems to be a survival of that religious particularism which reserved for the classical family, for the gens, special worships and exclusive rites.
Though in several cases the veneration of a common ancestor or of an official patron suggests in India the Graeco-Roman worship of the eponymous heroes, it cannot be said that this is a salient trait in the caste. Owing to the more free course of speculation, religious individualism has made advances in India which elsewhere have been checked by the coming into power of a political constitution, decidedly opposed to every innovation of the cult. In India, religion could become localized, split into endless divisions, and, on occasion, mobilized with a liberty unknown on classical ground. It is mostly through its practice, through its customs and their direct kinship with most antique conceptions that the continuity of tradition is evidenced in the caste.
(To be continued.)
MORE ABOUT GABRIEL BOUGATON.
BY WILLIAM FOSTER. SINCR writing, in the number for September last (Vol. XL, p. 247 ff.), an account of Gabriel Boughton, the doctor whose name is associated with the opening-up of English commerce in Bengal, I have unexpectedly come across a hitherto unnoticed letter from him, which adds a new and interesting fact to the little that is known of his career.
This document exists only in the form of a transcript, entered in the Surat Factory Invard Letter Book, Volume 1 (1646-47). The volume forms part of the Bombay records, but, owing to its having been sent home temporarily for calendaring purposes, I have had the opportunity of examining it fully. It has suffered much from damp and decay, and, although it has been skillfully repaired, many of the letters are wholly or in part illegible. This applies especially to the copy of Boughton's letter, which comes first in the volume ; at least half of it has perished, including the greater part of the signature. There can, however, be no doubt as to the latter ; the GH and the final N are plainly visible, as well as the top of the B, while there is * postscript with two initials, the first of which is clearly G, while the second looks like B. Farther, in the same volume is a copy of a letter of November 28, 1646, from Bianâ (near Agra), likewise received at Surat on the 22nd of the following month, which refers to (and apparently encloses) one from Mr Boughton.' Evidently the two writers travelled down together from Agra.
The date of the letter is the next point to be considered. The transcriber has unfortunately omitted the month ; and all that we have to go upon is that it was written upon the 4th
* Leist. Altar. Jw. Ciu. p. 273 ss. Kovalevskoy. Fam. et Prop. primit. p. 119 . be Leist, Graeco-ital B. P. 319.
Fustel de Coulange, La Cite Antique. p. 118-9. » Max Moller, cited by Hearn, p. 121; Ind. Stud. X., p. 88 s. # Booker-Marquardt, Rom, Alterth, ii., p. 10.
