alone is of importance is that Government should carefully consider the propriety of continuing to permit the High Court to make new laws for the whole Hindu' population of the Madras Province, in accordance with the doubtful views of a single speculative writer, and in disregard of the not doubtful views of (perhaps) hundreds of other writers. Is 'Madras doctrine' to be forced on the people for ever by the Judges, in the absence of all knowledge as to what the people's Usage really is?

Should Government be advised, for any reason, to approve the course adopted by the High Court, in making new laws in accordance with the views of Vijñāneçvara, and in constituting the Mitākṣarā the actual law of the land, it will be impossible for it also to approve the contrary course occasionally adopted by the High Court, in deliberately setting aside plain rules in the Mitākṣarā, and substituting for them principles taken from English equity or elsewhere. The High Court admittedly did this in establishing my sixth False Principle, that a member of an undivided Family can aliene joint ancestral property to the extent of his own share.' See above, pp. 225-35. It is true that the High Court has at length abandoned this principle as erroneous. But, unless Government intervenes, there is nothing to prevent the Court from legislating again in a similar manner.

If, as I hope and expect, Government should see cause to interfere for the protection of the people from the mischievous use of the Mitākṣarā, the question will arise, with what should this work be replaced?

And the answer to this question should be sufficiently obvious to one who has taken the trouble to read through this book, or even the First Part of it. Usage being 'highest dharma,' reasonable and business-like efforts must be made to ascertain what the Usage of South India may chance to be. And, once ascertained, Usage must be our sole guide in administering Hindū law, both to the Brahman and to the non-Brahman tribes and castes and families of the Madras Province.

But, necessarily, in order to ascertain Usage, we must supplement the knowledge to be gotten by inquiry amongst all classes of men, with knowledge to be derived, by intelligent research and comparison, from all existing works in which usages and customs are to be found enshrined. Manu, Apastamba, and Narada must be assiduously studied; Medhātithi and other commentators, including the author of the Mitākṣarā, must be consulted; the Gentoo Code and Colebrooke's Digest must be perused-in a word, every work calculated to throw light on the subject must be turned to use, with prudence and discrimination, and nothing that is of promise be neglected.

To do all this will take time; as does any great and important work. But it will not cost much. And the most important part of it, the inquiry by commission into the actual usages and customs of South India, once begun need not take more than one year, or at the most two years, to finish. I am convinced that the adoption of the simple procedure sketched out in my Prospectus, might bring about most excellent results within three or four years.

To pretend, as Mr. Innes has pretended, that to adopt my suggestions would 'commit the Madras High Court to chaos,' is merely absurd, in the presence of the fact that at this very moment the Hindu law of Madras is, as declared by Burnell, 'in a chaotic state.'

Nor is it reasonable to fear, with Mr. Innes, that to adopt my suggestions will commit us to the enforcement of an overwhelming variety of discordant customs among the lower castes, many of them of a highly immoral and objectionable character.' For, if my suggestions were adopted, the burden of proof would be shifted from the shoulders of those who affirm, to the shoulders of those who deny, the validity of various customary acts supposed by the High Court to be done in violation of the laws of Manu and others; and the inevitable result of this would be that customary (and therefore good) marriages, adoptions, alienations, and civil acts of all kinds, would never (or very rarely) be impugned in the Courts as being invalid. At present, the known prejudice against Usage, and the practice of compelling every one who affirms, to prove, the existence of a custom, offer great temptations to the unscrupulous; and poor men, who constitute the great bulk of litigants in the Madras Province, must often be deterred by want of means from even attempting to establish by evidence, to the satisfaction of the High Court, the existence of the most notorious facts. Under the proposed system all this would be changed, and the poor Indian would be suffered to marry,

adopt, aliene, and do civil acts of all kinds, in peace, as countless generations of his fathers have been suffered to do before him. It would not be necessary to' enforce,' since none would look to challenge, his acts, which, however 'immoral and objectionable' they may he in Mr. Innes's eyes, are not at all immoral, nor in the very least degree objectionable, in the land where Usage is highest dharma.'

The Jubilee Year of their gracious Sovereign would be for ever memorable to the thirty and odd millions of Madras, if it brought with it a resolve of the Government to give practical effect to the wise and sympathetic words she spoke to them, after the Mutiny in which they took no part: We disclaim alike the right and desire to impose our convictions on any of our subjects. We will that generally in framing and administering the law due regard be paid to the ancient rights, usages, and customs of India.'

INDEX

(INCLUDING CASES COMMENTED ON)