Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/44

34 of slandering a Sudra could at any time be exercised with impunity for a dime, while, if it was so done unto him, the law took good care that the plebeian wretch should never repeat the offense, for his tongue was to be slit. How truly could the Almighty, whose name they blasphemously invoke for their outrageous legislation, say of them, “Are not your ways unequal?” Even in salutations the Code ordained the forms, and gave them a religious significance. “A Brahmin was to be asked whether his devotion had prospered, a Kshatriya whether he had suffered from his wounds, a Vaisya whether his wealth was secure, and a Sudra whether he was in good health.”—Menu, II, 127.

The food, the privileges, the duties, of this pampered monopolist are all minutely laid down in the Code, but they are too diffuse and too childish to place before the reader, and would not be worth the space occupied. In proof of this I quote one sentence from the fourth chapter, merely remarking that the whimsical injunctions are left without any rhyme or reason. They are as unaccountable as they are singular. “He (the Brahmin) must not gaze on the sun while rising or setting, or eclipsed or reflected in water; he must not run while it rains; he must not look on his own image in water; when he sees the bow of Indra in the sky he must not show it to any man, he must not step over a string to which a calf is tied; and he must not wash his feet in a pan of mixed metal.”

In these stages of its development and claims, Brahminism is nothing less than a system of supreme selfishness, and was worthy of the express teaching with which the Brahmin was directed, in an emergency, to sacrifice every thing to his own precious self, in the following rule: “Against misfortune let him preserve his wealth; at the expense of his wealth let him preserve his wife; but let him at all events preserve himself, even at the hazard of his wife and riches.”

How little can such a religion or such a law know of disinterested affection, or of that devotion which would risk every thing for the safety and happiness of its beloved object?