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68 courts. One part of the task was comparatively easy, for a good, if lengthy, digest of Muhammadan law had been made by command of Aurangzeb. But the Hindu laws, which concerned two-thirds of the people, were buried in a multitude of books written in a tongue which very few Hindus could understand. Ten of the most learned Pandits in the country came down to Calcutta at Hastings' special desire, to compile an authoritative digest of Hindu laws. Translated into Persian from the Sanskrit originals, the new code enabled the courts to decide all cases with certainty and despatch. Mr. Halhed, of the Company's service, then set to work upon an English translation, which was completed early in 1775. While it was still in progress, Hastings sent the first two chapters to his old school-fellow, the great Lord Mansfield, 'as a proof that the inhabitants of this land are not in the savage state in which they have been unfairly represented.'

Meanwhile, Hastings' Government had been engaged in remodelling the police of Calcutta, and had dealt some vigorous blows against the more rampant forms of lawless violence in Bengal. Gangs of Dakáits, or bandits, had all through the century been driving a brisk trade in rapine and murder among the feeble folk of a country in which law and order had become words of little meaning. 'They are robbers by profession, and even by birth,' wrote the Committee of Circuit in 1772; 'they are formed into regular communities, and their families subsist by the spoils