The other does not relate to judicial evidence, but pronounces that, in courting a woman, in an affair where grass or fruit has been eaten by a cow, and in case of a promise made for the preservation of a Brahman, it is no deadly sin to take a light oath. From these passages it has been assumed that the Hindu law gives a direct sanction to perjury; and to this has been ascribed the prevalence of false evidence, which is common to men of all religions in India: yet there is more space devoted in this code to the prohibition of false evidence than to that of any other crime, and the offence is denounced in terms as awful as have ever been applied to it in any European treatise either of religion or of law.
“Naked and shorn, tormented with hunger and thirst, and deprived of sight, shall the man who gives false evidence go with a potsherd to beg food at the door of his enemy.”—“Headlong, in utter darkness, shall the impious wretch tumble into hell, who, being interrogated on a judicial inquiry answers one question falsely.”
A creditor is authorised, before complaining to the court, to recover his property by any means in his power, resorting even to force within certain bounds. This law still operates so strongly in some Hindu states, that a creditor imprisons his debtor in his private house, and even keeps him for a period without food and exposed to the sun, to compel him to produce the money he owes. Interest varies from two per cent. per mensem for a Brahman to five per cent. for a Sudra.
The rules regarding man and wife are full of puerilities; the most important ones shall be stated after a short account of the laws relating to marriage. Six forms of marriage are recognised as lawful. Of these, four only are allowed to Brahmans, which (though differing in minute particulars) all agree in insisting that the father shall give away his daughter without receiving a price. The remaining two forms are permitted to the military class alone, and are abundantly liberal even with that limitation. One is, when a soldier carries off a woman after a victory, and espouses her against her will; and the other, when consummation takes place by mutual consent, without any formal ceremony whatever. Two sorts of marriage are forbidden: when the father receives a nuptial present; and when the woman, from intoxication, or other cause, has been incapable of giving a real consent to the union.
A girl may be married at eight, or even earlier; and, if her father fails to give her a husband for three years after she is marriageable (i.e., capable of being a parent), she is at liberty to choose one for herself. Men may marry women of the classes below them, but on no account of those superior to their own. A man must not marry within six known degrees of relationship on either side, nor with any woman whose family name, being the same, shows her to be of the same race as his own. The marriage of people of equal class is performed by joining hands; but a woman of the military class, marrying a Brahman, holds an arrow in her hand; a Vaisya woman a whip; and a Sudra, the skirt of a mantle. The marriage of equals is most recommended, for the first wife at least: that of a Brahman with a Sudra is discouraged; and, as a first wife, it is positively forbidden.
Marriage is indissoluble, and the parties are bound to observe mutual fidelity. From the few cases hereafter specified, in which the husband may take a second wife, it may be inferred that, with those exceptions, he must have but one wife. A man may marry again on the death of his wife; but the marriage of widows is discouraged, if not prohibited (except in the case of Sudras). A wife who is barren for eight years, or she who has produced no male children in eleven, may be superseded by another wife.
It appears, notwithstanding this expression, that the wife first married retains the highest rank in the family. Drunken and immoral wives, those who bear malice to their husbands, or are guilty of very great extravagance, may also be superseded. A wife who leaves her husband’s house, or neglects him for a twelvemonth, without a cause, may be deserted altogether.
A man going abroad must leave a provision for his wife. The wife is bound to wait for her absent husband for eight years, if he be gone on religious duty; six, if in pursuit of knowledge or fame; and three, if for pleasure only. The practice of allowing a man to raise up issue to his brother, if he died without children, or even if (though still alive) he have no hopes of progeny, is reprobated, except for Sudras, or in case of a widow who has lost her husband before consummation.
The natural heirs of a man are the sons of his body, and their sons, and the sons of his daughters, when appointed in default of heirs male to raise up issue to him. The son of his wife, begotten by a near kinsman, at some time when his own life had been despaired of, according to the practice formerly noticed (which, though disapproved of as heretical, would appear to be recognised when it has actually taken place), is also entitled to inherit as a son. On the failure of issue of the above description, an adopted son succeeds: such a son loses all claim on the inheritance of his original father; and is entitled to a sixth of the property of his adoptive one, even if, subsequently to his adoption, sons of the body should be born. On failure of the above heirs follow ten descriptions of sons, such as never could have been thought of but by Hindus, with whom the importance of a descendant for the purpose of performing obsequies is superior to most considerations. Among these are included the son of a man’s wife by an uncertain father, begotten when he himself has long been absent, and the son of his wife of whom she was pregnant, without his knowledge, at the time of the marriage. The illegitimate son of his daughter by a man whom she afterwards marries, the son of a man by a married woman who has forsaken her husband, or by a widow, are also admitted into this class; as are, last of all, his own sons by a Sudra wife. These and others (ten in all) are admitted, by a fiction of the law, to be sons, though the author of the code himself speaks contemptuously of the affiliation, even as affording the means of efficacious obsequies.[c]