though both have equal claims upon his reverence. But admitting that a Hindoo author, an expounder of their law, sin against some of the sacred writers, by withholding a blind submission to their authority, and likewise that the natives of the country have for ages adhered to the rules he has laid down, considering them reasonable, and calculated to promote their social interest, though seemingly at variance with some of the sacred authors; it is those holy personages alone that have a right to avenge themselves upon such expounder and his followers; but no individual of mere secular authority, however high, can, I think, justly assume to himself the office of vindicating the sacred fathers, and punishing spiritual insubordination, by introducing into the existing law an overwhelming change in the attempt to restore obedience.
18. In this apparent heterodoxy, I may observe, Jeemootvahun does not stand single. The author of the Mitakshura also has, in following, very properly, the established privilege of an expounder, reconciled, to reason, by a construction of his own, such sacred texts as appeared to him, when taken literally, in consistent with justice or good sense. Of this, numerous instances might easily be adduced, but the principle is so invariably adopted by this class of writers, that the following may suffice for examples. The author of the Mitakshura first quotes (Ch. I. Sec. iii. Art. 3 and 4, p. 263 — 265) the three following texts of Munoo, allotting the best portion of the heritage to the eldest brother at the time of partition. “The portion deducted for the eldest is the twentieth part of the heritage, with the best of all the chattles; for the middlemost, half of that; for the youngest, a quarter of it.” “If a deduction be thus
