Caste and Race in India c10.9

c10.9

Among the Sumerians the aristocracy of the city was formed by the priests and the officials, while the free land-holding citizens formed the middle class, who worked their lands with the help of the slaves.⁷ The fragments of Sumerian laws that have come down to us recognize no inequalities among these classes of the community.⁸ But in the Code of Hammurapi, the nature and amounts of fines and punishments are mostly determined by the class-status of the offender and the sufferer.¹ The law of limb for limb was restricted to those cases only where the sufferer belonged to the highest class, physical injuries in other cases being generally compensated for by fines. For a physical injury inflicted by a patrician on a plebeian the fine was one-third that which a plebeian would have had to pay if he had caused it to his equal. In the case of theft, the patrician paid thrice the fine that the plebeian had to pay. While divorcing a wife, for whom no bride-price was paid, the patrician had to pay her thrice the award that was demanded of a plebeian. The surgeon's fees depended on the status of the patient: the higher the status, the larger the fees.²