Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/546

 236 Reviews.

(l) a kind of executive committee [a) outside or {b) inside the Council ; or (2) a judicial assembly. It is useless to ask which body legislated, as Mr. Law seems to accept Messrs. Macdonell and Keith's view that law-making was regarded with indiffer- ence. But no highly centralized vState, ever menaced by foreign aggression, can afford to let the folk evolve its own customary laws concerning inheritance, for instance. It must secure recruits and provide for watch and ward, and a good deal of modern " custom " bears marks of having been devised by hard-pressed rulers anxious to uphold the family and keep fiefs, estates and holdings intact even at the sacrifice of natural equity. So it looks as if someone made laws, and as if the legislature was a practical body by no means under Brahman control. The greatest emphasis is laid on the necessity for secrecy in the counsels of the King. Was it deemed inexpedient to publish too much about the conduct of business } Perhaps. But before we can hazard any speculations philology must tell us more precisely what the terms used implied. For instance, Dandaniti is rendered " polity," but it appears to connote " power to punish." ^ Mr. Law objects to making parisad = " Cabinet," but the term seems to connote an ecclesiastical element, a convention rather than a purely lay assembly. Indian Sanskritists are very divided in their interpretations of the technical terms used, and here there is much scope for inquiry. That the parisad was highly representative may be supposed from the fact that it was sometimes composed thus : — Brahmans 4, Kshatriyas 8, Vaisyas {bourgeois) 21, Sudras 3, and even one Suta member. The Suta was the offspring of a Brahman's daughter by a Kshatriya, and therefore one. of the six low " mixed " castes {Manu, X. §§ ii and 17). ^ On the other hand Mr. Law tells us that the Siita was the Royal Equerry, replaced later by the Asvadhyaksa, who might be called " The Master of the Horse." .■-Vs a caste the Suta were entrusted with the

1 Cf. the terms dandika and dandavdsika, both derived from danda, " a rod." These formed two of the eighteen elements of the State : Antiquities of Chamba, by Dr. J. Ph. Vogel, i. p. 128. The sceptre seems to have originated in the rod.


 * Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv. pp. 404 et seqq.