360 



tion of pleasing a hundred thousand inhabitants; who only made 

 one appeal to the superior courts at Baroche or Bombay. 



I was delighted with the simplicity of this mode of proceeding. 

 From having been an alderman and sheriff at Bombay, and for 

 some years worn the black gown as a pleader in the courts of jus- 

 tice at that presidency, I was not enlirely unacquainted with Eng- 

 lish law: but had I equalled Blackstone in knowledge of British 

 jurisprudence, it would have availed little among a people com- 

 pletely attached to their own customs, and influenced by the pre- 

 judices of caste. I was therefore happy to accommodate m_ysclf 

 to their usages. I believe I may truly say, that not a present was 

 ever made to an individual belonoino- to the adawlet; nor was a 

 court-fee under any description ever exacted. This mode of jus- 

 tice was something similar to the statute ordained in the Levilical 

 law. " If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, be- 

 ing matters of controversy within thy gates, then thou shalt come 

 unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge, and shall inquire 

 of them, and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment: and 

 thou shalt observe to do according to the sentence of the law 

 which they shall teach thee; and according to the judgment which 

 they shall tell thee, that shalt thou do/' 



In the inner court of the durbar, immediately fronting the open 

 side of the hall of justice, was a sacred pepal-tree, and in an ad- 

 joining square a noble banian-tree. These places were esteemed 

 holy while Dhuboy continued under the peshwa government of 

 Poonah, and a brahmin pundit resided at the durbar; on be- 

 coming the abode of an Englishman, the building lost its reputed 

 sanctity; the trees still retained their claim to veneration: they 



