SITTING IN DHARNA. TDROBABLY the best account of sitting -*in Dliarna is to be found in Mr. Nel son's work on " Hindu Law." The following description is there given : — "The recognized mode of compelling a debtor to pay up appears to have been by sending a Brahman to do Dkarna [is this our "dun "?] before his house, with a dagger or bowl of poison to be used by the Brahman on his own body if the debtor proved obstinate. When the tax-collector gave too much trouble, a ryot would sometimes erect a Koor, or pile of wood, and burn an old woman on it by way of bringing sin on the head of his tormentor. The lex tahoiiis obtained in the following shape : Persons who considered themselves aggrieved by acts of their enemies would kill their own wives and children, in order, as we may suppose, to compel their enemies to do a similar act to their own hurt. Thus two Brahmans cut off their mother's head to spite a foe. And it seems that upon being punished by loss of caste, out of deference to the feelings of the British Government, these simple-minded men expressed the greatest surprise, since they had acted, so they said, through ignorance. On one occasion five women were put to death together for witchcraft, after being regularly tried for the offence, according to custom, by the heads of their caste. "With regard to the lex talionis, a letter is preserved in Recueil X. of the Lettres cnr. et éd., written by Father Martin in 1709, in which he describes* the horrible practice in vogue amongst the inhabitants of the Marava country, of killing or wounding one self, or one's wife or child, in order to compel one's enemy to go and do likewise. Such a practice can obtain only where no legal means exist of obtaining reparation for wrongs suffered. It would be very inter
esting to know to what extent this natural law has prevailed in various forms in South India, and whether its influence has yet altogether died out. "The practice of Dkarna would seem to be nothing more than a threat of instantly resorting to the lex talionis. And I take it that Marco Polo was mistaken in his view of the meaning of a creditor drawing a circle round his debtor, by way of arresting him, when he said that a debtor who breaks such arrest ' is punished with death as a trans gressor against right and justice,' and that he (Marco Polo) had seen the king himself so arrested and compelled to pay a debt. Doubtless the king was coerced by the threat, express or implied, that the creditor would kill or wound himself if not satis fied, in which case the king would have been bound to kill or wound himself in return. Father Bouchet, in the letter cited above, tells us that obstinate debtors were arrested in their houses by their creditors in the name of the Prince, under pain of being declared rebels, and when so arrested durst not pass out until bystanders had interceded and made the creditors come to terms. The use of the name of the Prince I regard as imaginary, and opposed to native ideas. What coerced the debtor probably was the fear of his creditor injuring himself. And possibly it is this fear that often operates on the minds of native servants of the present day, when they decline to go on a long journey with their masters without first par tially satisfying their creditors, and where, as so often happens, an old man or woman is killed by his or her own party in a boundary riot, probably in most instances the object of the slayers is to bring sin on their opponents."
