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of the people ; and the necessity for utilizing these bodies in 

 this manner is all the greater, now that under the scheme for 

 enlarged legislative councils just introduced, the local bodies 

 have been conceded the privilege of nominating members to 

 these councils. One of the effects of the introduction of the 

 British system of administration of justice by fixed laws and 

 regular courts is to suppress the indigenous agencies, whetlier 

 caste assemblies or guilds, by which the customary usages 

 regulating the conduct and rights of the members of the com- 

 munities were constantly though unconsciously modified to 

 suit change of circumstances. Even now in the rural tracts, 

 the headmen of certain castes enquire into and dispose of dis- 

 putes among the members of the castes regarding offences 

 relating to marriage, partition of family property, breaches of 

 caste observances, &c.,the decisions being enforced either by 

 the imposition of fines which are paid to the village temple, or 

 to a common fund, or by excommunication of the delinquents 

 by depriving them of their social privileges, such as the 

 " taking of fire and water " from their neighbours, entering the 

 village temple for purposes of worship, attending at mar- 

 riages and funerals, and availing themselves of the assistance 

 of the village barber, washerman, &c. These caste assemblies, 

 which are not now recognized by law, have lost much of their 

 vitality and will, in coarse of time, disappear altogether. 

 This is from one point of view a necessary and beneficial 

 process, as it is desirable in the interests of the country that 

 the endless differentiations of customary law in small com- 

 munities should be removed, and a fairly homogeneous law 

 applicable to large communities evolved. This result has 

 been brought about in most civilized countries by judicial 

 legislation which, while reducing the law to a uniform type 

 introduces at the same time, such modifications in it as the 

 progress of society requires. But as justice is administered 

 in this country mostly by judges who belong to a diffe- 

 rent nationality from that of the litigants, and who would 

 incur blame if they, instead of administering Hindu law 

 of the strictest type, modified it according to their own ideas 

 of the fitness of things and of the necessities of individual 

 cases, the tendency is to stereotype the ancient law and 

 arrest the changes which it would have undergone in its 

 natural course of evolution. This curious and unexpected 

 result of English judges being greater conservators of ancient 

 ritual law than native judges even of the most orthodox type 

 would be, has been noticed both by Mr. J. D. Mayne and Sir 

 Henry Maine. " The pundit," writes Mr. J., D. Mayne 

 in his work on Hindu Law, " however bigoted he might be, 



