61. The marriage of a younger brother before the CHAP.

elder, and that elder's omission to marry before the

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younger, giving a daughter to either of them, and

officiating at their nuptial sacrifice,

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62. Defiling a damsel, usury,

want of perfect chastity in a student, selling a holy pool or garden, a wife, or a child,

63. Omitting the sacred investiture, abandoning a 'kinsman, teaching the Véda for hire, learning it 'from a hired teacher, selling commodities, that ought not to be sold,

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64. Working in mines of any sort, engaging in dykes, bridges, or other great mechanical works, spoiling medicinal plants repeatedly, subsisting by the harlotry of a wife, offering sacrifices and preparing 'charms to destroy the innocent,

65. Cutting down green trees for firewood, performing holy rites with a selfish view merely, and eating prohibited food once without a previous design.

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66. Neglecting to keep up the consecrated fire, stealing any valuable thing besides gold, non-pay'ment of the three debts, application to the books of a false religion, and excessive attention to musick or dancing,

67. Stealing grain, base metals, or cattle, familiarity by the twice-born with women who have ⚫ drunk inebriating liquor, killing without malice a woman, a Súdra, a Vaisya, or a Cshatriya, and denying ' a future

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CHAP. a future state of rewards and punishments, are all 'crimes in the third degree, but higher or lower according to circumstances.

68. GIVING pain to a Bráhmen, smelling at any spirituous liquor or any thing extremely fetid and unfit to be smelt, cheating, and unnatural practices ' with a male, are considered as causing a loss of ' class.

69. To kill an ass, a horse, a camel, a deer, an elephant, a goat, a sheep, a fish, a snake, or a buffalo, is declared an offence, which degrades the ' killer to a mixed tribe.

70.

ACCEPTING presents from despicable men, ille८ gal traffick, attendance on a Súdra-master, and speaking falsehood, must be considered as causes of "exclusion from social repasts.

71. KILLING an insect, small or large, a worm, or 'a bird, eating what has been brought in the same basket with spirituous liquor, stealing fruit, wood, or 'flowers, and great perturbation of mind on trifling 'occasions, are offences which cause defilement.

72. You shall now be completely instructed in those penances, by which all the sins just men'tioned are expiable.

73. IF a Bráhmen have killed a man of the sacerdotal class, without malice prepense, the slayer being far superiour to the slain in good qualities, he must himself make a hut in a forest and dwell in

it twelve whole years, subsisting on alms for the CHAP. purification of his soul, placing near him, as a to

ken of his crime, the skull of the slain, if he can

procure it, or, if not, any human skull. The time of penance for the three lower classes must be twenty four, thirty six, and forty eight, years.

74. Or, if the slayer be of the military class, he may voluntarily expose himself as a mark to archers, 'who know his intention; or, according to circum'stances, may cast himself head-long thrice, or even till he die, into blazing fire.

75. Or, if he be a king, and slew a priest without malice or knowledge of his class, he may per'form, with presents of great wealth, one of the following sacrifices; an Aswamedha, or a Swerjit, or a Gósava, or an Abhijit, or a Viswajit, or a Trivrit, or an Agnishtut.

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76. Or, to expiate the guilt of killing a priest 'without knowing him and without design, the killer may walk on a pilgrimage a hundred yojanas, repeating any one of the Védas, eating barely enough to sustain life, and keeping his organs in perfect subjection;

77. Or, if in that case the slayer be unlearned but rich, he may give all his property to some • Bráhmen learned in the Véda, or a sufficiency of 'wealth for his life, or a house and furniture to hold while he lives:

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78. Or, eating only such wild grains as are offered to the gods, he may walk to the head of the river Saraswati against the course of the stream; or, subsisting on very little food, he may thrice repeat the whole collection of Védas, or the Rich, Yajush, and Sáman.

79. Or, his hair being shorn, he may dwell near a town, or on pasture-ground for cows, or in some holy place, or at the root of a sacred tree, taking I pleasure in doing good to cows and to Bráhmens: 80. There, for the preservation of a cow or a 'Bráhmen, let him instantly abandon life; since the preserver of a cow or a Bráhmen atones for the 'crime of killing a priest:

81. Or, by attempting at least three times forcibly to recover from robbers the property of a "Bráhmen, or by recovering it in one of his attacks, or even by losing his life in the attempt, he atones for his crime.

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82. Thus, continually firm in religious austerity, chaste as a student in the first order, with his mind 'intent on virtue, he may expiate the guilt of undesignedly killing a Bráhmen, after the twelfth year • has expired.

83. Or, if a virtuous Bráhmen unintentionally kill ' another, who had no good quality, he may atone for his guilt by proclaiming it in an assembly of priests ' and military men, at the sacrifice of a horse, and ' by

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by bathing with other Bráhmens at the close of CHAP. the sacrifice:

84. Bráhmens are declared to be the basis, and Cshatriyas the summit, of the legal system: he, 'therefore, expiates his offence by fully proclaiming it in such an assembly.

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85. From his high birth alone, a Bráhmen is an object of veneration even to deities; his declarations to mankind are decisive evidence; and the Véda • itself confers on him that character.

86. Three at least, who are learned in the Véda, • should be assembled to declare the proper expiation for the sin of a priest, but, for the three other classes, the number must be doubled, tripled, and quadrupled: what they declare shall be an atonement for sinners; since the words of the learned give purity.

87. Thus a Bráhmen, who has performed one of the preceding expiations, according to the circumstances of the homicide and the characters of the persons killed and killing, with his whole mind fixed on GOD, purifies his soul, and removes the guilt of slaying a man of his own class:

88. He must perform the same penance for killing an embryo, the sex of which was unknown, but whose parents were sacerdotal, or a military or a commer

cial man employed in a sacrifice, or a Bráhmenì-wo

man, who has bathed after temporary uncleanness;

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