Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c7.44

c7.44

banishment. Caste had a good deal to do with the law on morality. Manu objects to adultery partly because it means a mixture of the castes whence follows sin, “which cuts up even the roots and causes the destruction of everything.” A maiden who makes advances to a high caste man is not to be fined but she who courts a low caste man is to be interned in her home. A low caste man who makes love to a maiden of the highest caste must suffer corporal punishment but if he addresses himself to a maiden of his own caste he is only to pay the nuptial fee at the desire of her father. A rape on a woman of equal caste brought a fine of two hundred paṇas while that on a woman of a different order was punished with a fine of six hundred paṇas and the amputation of two fingers. Caste invades the social law at another point. Where others suffered capital punishment, a Brāhmaṇa was subjected only to a tonsure of the head. “No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brāhmaṇa; a king, therefore, must not even conceive in his mind the thought of killing a Brāhmaṇa.” At the worst, a Brāhmaṇa was only to be banished and even then he must be allowed to take up all his property with him. If a Brāhmaṇa approached an unguarded Kṣatriya or Vaiśya woman, he was fined five hundred paṇas, but in the case of a Śūdra woman a thousand paṇas. A Vaiśya who approached an unguarded Brāhmaṇa woman was fined five hundred paṇas; a Kṣatriya for the same offence a thousand paṇas. But if the woman in question was a guarded one, the Kṣatriya was humiliated and fined a thousand paṇas while the Vaiśya forfeited all his property and suffered imprisonment for a year. If the Śūdra was involved with an unguarded twice-born woman, he was castrated and deprived of all his property. If he violated a guarded twice-born woman, he was to lose his all and suffer death. Rather inconsistent with all those details, there is a general law in Manu that every one, except a Brâhmaṇa, guilty of adultery should be put to death.¹ This seems to have been the old law which had gradually been encrusted with further caste privileges.