12 Mr. Mayne on the xidministvation of Native Law 



was distinguished by science and good conduct should take 

 a greater share than the rest. The Muhammadan law, as 

 being more modern, and perhaps from the more practical 

 character of its author, contains fewer anomalies. But many 

 even of its principles, as, for instance, the legal disabilities 

 imposed upon a prodigal, show that the distinction between 

 prudential and compulsory obligations was far from under- 

 stood. Yet our reports show very few instances of foolish 

 decisions in this department of law, springing from a servile 

 adherence to Native maxims of jurisprudence. Several rea- 

 sons account for this. One of the most important was, that 

 our English Judges really knew very little of Native law, 

 and what they did know came to them filtered through a 

 few European minds, and cleared of all its impurities, and 

 most of its frivolities. It is difficult to overestimate the 

 evils which would have ensued, if all our early Judges, con- 

 scientiously anxious as they would be to administer Native 

 law, and ignorant as they generally were of the first 

 elements of jurisprudence, had possessed sufficient know- 

 ledge of the languages to investigate for themselves the 

 original sources of the system they were sworn to dispense. 

 What absurdities they would have fallen upon, any Native 

 law-book will show ; while a perusal of Jagaanatha's Digest 

 will prove that those absurdities would not even have the 

 merit of consistency. But men seldom see the worthlessness 

 of that which they have laboured to acquire, and Judges, 

 who had striven to be Pandits, would have succeeded in 

 producing a conflict of decisions, few of which would have 

 been recognised by a Native as conformable with usage, and 

 still fewer of which would have been considered by a jurist 

 to be law. From this fatality they were saved by their own 

 fortunate ignorance, and by the still more fortunate know- 

 ledge of a few. Men like Sir Wnl. Jones, H. T. Colebrooke, Ellis, 

 Sutherland and W. H. MacNaghten supplied the materials' 



