6 



ON HYGIENE IN 



of relationship ; also with a person who was subject to 

 consumption, indigestion, epilepsy, leprosy or elephantiasis, 

 deformed, with one who had inflamed eyes, or who suffered 

 from habitual sickness. In selecting a wife one should see, 

 that her form is without defect, that she walks gracefully 

 "like a young elephant;" that she has a moderate quantity 

 of hah', teeth of moderate size, and an exquisitely soft body . 

 Certain classes of persons were excluded from Shraddhas or 

 funeral feasts, doubtless for hygienic reasons, although their 

 precise nature does not now appear. Among the persons 

 thus excluded were those afflicted with physical evils, such as 

 leprosy, blindness, and elephantiasis ; those guilty of certain 

 kinds of immorality ; sellers of meat, wine ; gamblers, and 

 physicians ; the latter no doubt, because their profession led 

 them among uncleanness of many kinds. 



A very vivid picture of the condition of the people in the 

 Buddhist period occurs in the work of Hiouen-Thsang. 

 There was then no registration of families for taxation, no 

 requisition for gratuitous labor ; all who were employed on 

 the construction of royal buildings or other public works 

 were paid according to their labor ; cultivators occupied the 

 heritages of their fathers and paid to the king as taxes 

 one-sixth of their produce ; transit duties on merchandise were 

 paid at ferries and barriers ; the punishment of death for 

 crimes was not inflicted, banishment " to the desert mountains " 

 having been its substitute. At the proper time the agri- 

 culturists permitted the streams to overflow the land, by 

 which the soil was rendered soft and fertile ; provisions of all 

 kinds, cereals and fruits, were very abundant, and in the 

 evening " the sound of convent bells might be heard on 

 every side, filling the air with their melody." 



Numerous allusions to what we may term " Sanitary " 

 conditions during the Brahminic period occur in the Rama- 

 yana. That great epic poem opens with a description of the 



