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The well-known story of Harishchandra goes'on to say that the Raja sold his wife and child and himself as slaves to pay off a ruthless Br&ahman’s debt, and there are numerous other stories to the same CHAP. XIV.] _ EARLY PAURANIK CIVILIZATION. 47° effect. Slavery indeed contest in India until recent . times, — The ordinary. conveyanice of siiResde persons in . towns was a kind ‘of covered litter drawn by oxen. - Both men and. women: travelled in such litters, and Vasantasen4 went in such a litter to meet her be- loved Charudatta in a garden outside the town, Any _ one who has travelled in a bullock cart, (as the pre- sent writer has), over the rough paved streets of . Ujjayini must know that the lady’s journey, like the course of her true-love, was not particularly smooth. ' Horses were not wnoften used as means of conveyance, and in Chapter 124 of the Katha Sarit Sagara we find. that a Brahman Deyasvamin fetched his wife from her father’s house, the lady beimg motnted: on a mare, and having a maid with her. Cars drawn by horses were probably only used by kings and lords and warriors in pale or in hunting expeditions, as we find in Sakun- tala, A solitary and invaluable se of the Scien administration of justice in the ancient Hindu times is given in Mrichchhakati. A Brahman Chérudatta is falsely’ accused by a profligate villain with the murder of Vasantasené, the heroine of the play. The villain we should mention, calls himself the king’s brother- in-law. Kings were not very particular in their amours ; and-thus it Kappened that brothers and relations of the women. of low caste whom kings took into their Es 472 PAURANIK PERIOD. [BOOK Vv. palaces, were provided with high places in the police. From numerous descriptions of such characters by Kalidasa and other poets, we learn that such upstarts made themselyes the pests of society, obnoxious to good men, and the terror of the humble and lowly. Such a crue! upstart, Vasudeva by name, had done his best to kill Vasantasena whose love he had vainly courted before, and then falsely accused Ch4rudatta with the crime, because the woman had loved Chéru- datta. The judge enters the court with the Provost and the Scribe (Kayastha), and Vasudeva enters his charge against Charudatta. The judge is unwilling to take up the ease on that day, but knowing the influence of the complainant with the king, takes it up, and even puts up with his insolent behaviour in court. Charudatta is summoned. Thé simple and good hearted Brahman enters the court, and his description of it will amuse many a modern reader, and will also give us some idea of the imps of the law who were employed in olden days. “The prospect is but little pleasing. The court looks like a sea ; its councillors Are deep engulphed in thought ; ; its tossing waves Are wrangling advocates ; its brood of monsters Are these wild animals, death’s ministers. Attorneys skim like wily snakes the surface. Spies are the sheli fish cowering midst its weeds, And vile informers, like the hovering curlew, Hang fluteering o'er, then pounce upon their prey. CHAP. XIV.] EARLY PAURANIK CIVILIZATION. 473 The beach that should be justice, is unsafe, Rough, rude and broken by oppression’s storms.”* : Wilson. We need tot go into the details of the evidence, but appearances certainly go very much against Chani- datta. Nevertheless the judge refuses to believe that good man guilty of the abominable crime, and says to himself, “It were as easy to weigh Himalaya, ford the ocean, or grasp the wind as to fix a stain on Charu- datta’s reputation.” But the circumstantial evidence becomes stronger, and the judge feels that by law he ought to decide against Charudatta, but nevertheless does not feel conviticed as to the facts. According to. his homely but forcible simile, “ the points of law are sufficiently clear here, but the understanding still labours like a cow in a quagmire.” In the meantime Charudatta’s friend enters th court, “and with him are discovered the ornaments*of the woman said to be murdered. ‘This seals Charudatta’s fate. The judge presses him to speak the truth, and even threatens him, and Charudatta, heart broken at -.* “That the translator may not be thought to haye had an English rather than an Indian court in his eye, he enumetates the terms of the original for the different members of which it is said to consist. Man- trins, councillors; Détas, the envoys or representatives of the parties ; the wild aniwals, death’s ministers ase Wdgas and seas, elephants and: horses employed to tread or tear condemned criminals to death; the Chéras ate spies or runners; Wénduésakas, disguised emissaries or informers ; and Adyasthas are seribes by profession whe discharge. the, x duties of notaries and attornies.” Witson. ; 474 PAURANIK PERIOD. [BOOK Vv. his own disgrace, overwhelmed by the evidence which is heaped against him, and sick of life on hearing that his beloved Vasantasena is no more, confesses, as many an innocent man has confessed, to a murder he has not committed. The judge orders “The convicted culprit being a Brahman, he cannot according to Manu be put to death, but he may be banished the kingdom with his property unattached.” The king however cruelly modifies this sentence into one of death. This cruel order of the king is intro- duced by the poet, as a sin which he expiates soon ‘after. A revolution overturns his rule, he is killed in battle by an usurper, and Charudatta is saved when on the point of being executed, and gets back his beloved Vasantasené, who had been left as dead by the cruel Vasudeva himself, but who had not died. The infuriated mob wish to kill the base culprit, the relation of the late king, but the magnanimous Charu- datta saves his life from the mob, and says “Set him free.” “Why so?” asks the mob, Charudatta replies with the genuine Hindu maxim ‘An humbled foe, who prostrate at your feet Solicits quarter, must not feel your sword.” Wilson. * (CHAPTER XV. | LATER PAURANIK CIVILIZATION, In the last chapter we have tried to give a brief: ‘sketch of Hindy life and civilization in the early’ ‘Pauranik Age, from the writings of the great Hindu authors who flourished in the sixth and succeeding centuries, But it is always a gain to seé ourselves as ‘others see us, and we propose in the present chapter to draw a similar sketch of the later Pauranik Age from the materials supplied to us by a cultured ‘and = large-hearted foreigner, . _Alberunl who__wrote © iin the eleventh century A. D. - , The value of Alberuni’s ates on India has long been ‘-known to scholars,’ but a scholarlike edition and translation ‘of it had hitherto been wanting. Dr. ‘Edward C. Sachau has now removed the want, and has ‘performed an eminent service to the cause of Oriental éresearch and of Indian history. ' Alberuni, or as his compatriots called him, Abu ‘Raihan, was born in 973 A.D. in the territory of modern Khiva.". When Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Khiva in 1017 A.D. the eminent. scholar was brought to Ghazni as a prisoner of war. It is probably this circum. stance which made. him look on Hindus with the 476 ' PAURANIK PERIOD. [BOOK Vv. sympathy due.to fellow . sufferers from the conquests and oppression of Mahmud. And. while he never hesitates to point out what he considers blemishes in Hindu civilization and literature, he has at least taken the pains to study that civilization and literature in a catholic spirit rare among later Musalman writers, and he never withholds the meed of praise where ‘praise is due. Of Mahmud’s reckless work of destruction in India Alberuni speaks with deserved animadversion. “ Mahmud,” he says, “utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed those wonderful exploits by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouths of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims. This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those ‘parts of the country conquered by us, and. have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places.” (Chap. 1) With regard to the Hindus, the fact which struck Alberuni most unfavorably is that what strikes most intelligent and even well-dispesed foreigners in the same way, viz. their. complete isolation from other nations \of the earth, their ignorance of the outside world, their ' ‘want of sympathy and communication with other peoples whom they call Miechchas. “They are,” says CHAP. KV.} LATER PAURANIK CIVILIZATION. 477 Alberuni, “ by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible - care to withhold it from men of. another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner. According to their belief, there is no other _ country on earth but theirs, no other race of man but _ theirs, and no created being besides them have any - knowledge of science: whatever, Their haughtiness is _ _ such that if you tell them of any science or scholar; in Khorasan and Persis, they will think you to be both | | an ignoramus and a liar, If they travelled and mixed. with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow minded as the present generation is.” (Chap 1.) In political. matters too India was in the last days of her decline when Alberuni wrote. The vast country which had owned the sway or the supremacy of | the great Vikramaditya in the sixth century, was now parcelled out among petty kings. and chiefs, all _ independent of each other and often warring with each - other.