In like manner, a price could be set upon any landed property he might possess; but the power of redemption did not extend to cattle, horses, elephants, or other live or dead stock. Whoever denied a just debt was not only fined, but sentenced to receive in open court from five to fifty cuts with a rattan, in the presence of his wife and fam ily. A borrower of copper, iron or grain was liable to pay cent per cent if he did not return the loan within twelve months. These people had a peculiar method of collecting debts, a method which has sur vived down to our own century. The cred itor would sit dharua at the debtor's door or gate, until some arrangement or instal ment was extorted by his importunity. Lord Teignmouth gives us an interesting descrip tion of the process of sitting Marna, and the principle involved. The Brahmin creditor proceeds to the door of his debtor and there squats himself, holding in his hand some poison, a dagger, or other instrument of suicide, which he threatens to use if his debtor should attempt to molest him or pass by him; and as the inviolability of a Brahmin is a fixed principle with the Hin doos, and to deprive him of life, either by direct violence or by causing his death in any way, is a crime which admits of no ex piation, it will readily be seen that the debtor is practically under arrest in his own house. "In this situation," concludes Lord Teign mouth, "the Brahmin fasts, and by the rigor of etiquette the unfortunate object of his arrest ought to fast also, and thus they both remain till the institutorof the dharna obtains satisfaction. In this, as he seldom makes the attempt without the resolution to perse vere, he rarely fails; for if the party thus arrested were to suffer the Brahmin sitting in dharna to perish by hunger, the sin would forever lie upon his head." A hundred years ago British law inter fered with this practice, though it could not wholly stop it. It was enacted that : Who ever voluntarily causes any person to do
anything which that person is not legally bound to do, by inducing that person to be lieve that he will become by some act of the offender an object of Divine displeasure if he does not do the thing which it is the object of the offender to cause him to do, shall be punished with imprisonment. The Chinese practiced a much more sen sible variety of dharna than the Hindoos. Intead of starving themselves to death, and broiling in the sun or shivering in the rain, creditors simply quartered themselves and their families upon their debtors, and the latter were generally glad to get rid of their unwelcome guests by scraping together and paying off the amount due. A debtor who was unable to meet his obligations could be compelled to wear a yoke round his neck in public, the hope of the creditors being that the man's friends or relatives would pay off his debt in order to save him from a prolongation of this terrible disgrace. Sitting dharna is said to be practiced in Persia to this day. A man intending to en force payment of a demand by fasting, be gins by sowing some barley at his debtor's door, and sitting down in the middle. The idea that the creditor means to convey to his debtor by this is, that he will stay where he is without food, either until he is paid, or until the barley-seed grows up and and gives him bread to eat. Something similar to this dharna was known in ancient Ireland. One of the Brehon laws enacted that a notice of five days was to be served on a debtor of inferior grade, and then dis tress was to be taken from him. But if the defendant was a chieftain, a flaith, a bard, or a bishop, the plaintiff was obliged to "fast upon him" in addition. The Troscead, or fasting upon one, consisted in go ing to the debtor's house and waiting at his door a certain time without food. The law ran: "He who refuses to cede what should be accorded to fasting, the judgment on him is that he pay double the thing for which he was fasted upon." If, however.
