of the soul as an axiom, and also believed that men must be reborn after death. How to escape from rebirth in a lower state, or to reach a higher stage of existence in the next world, was the problem. The Brahmins prescribed sacrifices to save the souls of ancestors, and both Brahmin, Jain, and other ascetics said that by penances and austerities men could raise themselves to a level with the gods, and be freed from the danger of rebirth in a lower state. The Buddha, on the other hand, in a spirit of stern common sense, which must have been very attractive to the practical minds of his Dravidian hearers, said: The only way for a man to release himself from the chain of existence with its fatal consequences is by his own efforts. He, and he alone, can subdue the desires which are the causes of changes of existence, and transform himself from a sinful to a sinless being, and when once that end is attained and his nature is absolutely purified and denuded of all desire for changes, the law of rebirth and compensation in a future life for evil deeds and mistakes in the past ceases to affect him. This manly creed evidently gained largely increasing numbers of followers, and its progress was watched no doubt carefully by the politicians. They finally in the time of Asoka, found Buddhism so popular as to make it a wise political step to proclaim it as the state religion of the vast Mauriyan empire. That empire, as I have endeavoured to show, had been built up by the gradual assimilation of the different people inhabiting the country, by using the best of the national laws and customs of the component races to perfect the methods of government, and by adapting such laws and customs to gradually increasing areas.

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ART. IX.-The Customs of the Ossetes, and the Light they throw on the Evolution of Law. Compiled from Professor

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Maxim Kovalefsky's Russian Work on Contemporary Custom and Ancient Law," and translated with Notes, by E. DELMAR MORGAN, M.R.A.S.

THE following paper, of which a part only was read before the Asiatic Society on March 19th, is founded on a book published in Russian by Prof. Maxim Kovalefsky. In it the author gives the results of his investigations into the manners and customs of the Ossetes, with special reference to the light thrown by them on the evolution of law. The late Sir Henry Maine, who may be justly regarded as our authority on ancient law and early customs, has well said in a passage quoted by Prof. Kovalefsky on his title-page, “In order to understand the most ancient condition of society all distances must be reduced, and we must look on mankind, so to speak, at the wrong end of the historical telescope." But this would be impossible in most parts where the waves of invading hosts and migrating nationalities have effaced almost every trace of early customs, and the historian may look in vain for materials to assist him in his inquiry. Fortunately there are tracts of the earth's surface removed beyond the influence of the destructive power of mankind, where primitive customs and beliefs have been handed down from father to son in almost unbroken continuity. Among these tracts are the higher valleys of mountain chains where the inhabitants of the plains have found safety in their struggles for self-preservation. In the highlands of the Caucasus, as in other mountainous regions, remnants of Aryan tribes have found it possible to subsist, though not in large numbers, preserving their independence and per

1 Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, but I have not found the passage in this work.

petuating customs and traditions in the highest degree interesting to the historian and philosopher. To these reference must be made if we would supply the missing link in the history of civilization, to these we should turn in order to trace the earliest dawn of juridical notions—the embryology of law. Such a people, living under circumstances precisely analogous to those we have sketched, are the Ossetes, inhabiting the central Caucasus on both sides of the main chain. Towards the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, when Russia had seriously taken in hand the conquest of the mountaineers, scientific travellers made their way into their midst and published the first reliable accounts of these people. In this way the world was indebted to the works of Güldenstedt, Reineggs, Dubois de Montpéreux and Klaproth. The last of these devotes several chapters of his "Voyage au Caucase" to the Ossetes and their country, and many of his observations are confirmed by more recent writers. But at the period we are speaking of the Caucasus was not readily accessible to men of science, and but few ventured to stray far from the high roads by which the Russian armies entered that region. Neither was the demand for scientific facts anything like what it has now become, and even for many years after the subjugation of the Caucasus had been accomplished little attention was bestowed even by ethnologists on the various tribes and nationalities comprised in that remote borderland of the Russian empire. It is only within the last decade or two, since the complete subjugation of the tribes and the establishment of settled authority in their midst, that travellers have been able to penetrate into all parts, armed with the requisite stock of knowledge and gifted with that thirst for learning more that is so marked a characteristic of the age in which we live. Among the most recent of these travellers we must mention M. Vsevolod Miller, to whom Prof. Kovalefsky dedicates his work, and to whose "Ossete Studies" reference will be made in the following pages.

1 Schamyl, the last independent chieftain, only surrendered in 1859.