HINDU LAW IN MADRAS IN 1714. 



Not the least interesting of the Letlres curieuses et edifiantes 

 (1720) is the lengthy epistle written by the Jesuit Father 

 Bouchet to the President Cocher, a great magistrate in 

 France, from Pondieherry in the year 1714, for the purpose 

 of informing him as to the mode in which justice was admin- 

 istered in India. This Father Bouchet stated in a letter of 

 1700, preserved inBertrand's Mission da Madure (Paris, 1854), 

 Vol. IV, that he had then spent twelve years in the Madura 

 country, and therefore, when he wrote the epistle now under 

 notice, he must have worked continuously in the Madura 

 Mission during a space of some twenty-six years. And, 

 considering the life he led, travelling on foot from village 

 to village and eating only such food as was proper for the 

 most rigorous ascetic, it is fair to presume that he must have 

 made himself tolerably well acquainted with the manners 

 and customs of all classes of the people of South India. No 

 doubt he saw most things through spectacles of his own, and 

 where he speaks of matters that may not have come under 

 his own personal observation, considerable allowance rtiust be 

 made for the possible mendacity of catechists and dependants, 

 and the reckless obsequiousness of ordinary native informant - 



