MADRAS IN 1714. 



LI 



to himself (or his). There can be no doubt that this horrible 

 practice is connected with magic. How extensive it may 

 be, how far modified forms of the superstition may still affect 

 everyday life in South India, is a question of deep interest 

 for criminal judges. 



Brahmans, it appears, whatever their sins, never were put 

 to death by violence. For grave offences their eyes were put 

 out, or they were banished the realm. Occasionally one 

 guilty of exceptionally bad conduct was starved to death in 

 a cage lined with thorns. 



Banishment, however, as enforced in Father Bouchet's time, 

 was hardly a very terrible penalty to suffer. It consisted of 

 quitting the city by one gate and forthwith re-entering it 

 by another. In fact, this mode of punishment was purely 

 nominal. And, indeed, looking to the language of this part 

 of the epistle as a whole, I cannot doubt that at the beginning 

 of the last century, in the old established thoroughly Indian 

 kingdom of Madura, there was nothing in the shape of an 

 organized administration of criminal justice ; that in fact the 

 King suffered ordinary criminals to go altogether harmless, 

 and delivered over to his officers for punishment only those 

 who had offended (or were supposed to have offended) 

 directly against his own sovereign will and pleasure, and 

 had aroused his royal wrath. I have already shown this in 

 the Madura Country by citing several passages from letters 

 of Jesuit missionaries. See, for example, one of Father 

 Vico, dated Madura, 30th August 1611, which tells us that 

 " toutes les autres terres sont les domaines d'une foule de 

 petits princes ou seigneurs tributaires ; ces derniers ont chacun 

 dans leur domaine la pleine administration de la police et de 

 la justice, si toutefois justice il y a." The italics are mine. 

 The following passage from a letter of Father Martinz, dated 

 Sattiamangalam, 1651, describes in terse and forcible lan- 

 guage the miserable state of anarchy that ordinarily prevailed 



