THE HINDU SOCIAL ORDER : ITS UNIQUE FEATURES 119
VIII. 379. “Ignominous tonsure is ordained, instead of capital punishment, for a Brahmin adulterer where the punishment of other classes may extend to loss of life.”
VIII. 380. “Never shall the king slay a Brahmin, though convicted of all possible crimes; let him banish the offender from his realm, but with all his property secure, and his body unhurt.”
XI. 127. “For a Brahmin killing intentionally a virtuous man of the Kshatriya class, the penance must be a fourth part of that ordained for killing a priest; for killing a Vaishya, only an eighth; for killing a Shudra, who had been constant in discharging his duties a sixteenth part.”
XI. 128. “But, if a Brahmin kills a Kshatriya without malice, he must, after a full performance of his religious rites, give the priests one bull together with a thousand cows.”
XI. 129. “Or he may perform for three years the penance for slaying a Brahmin, mortifying his organs of sensation and action, letting his hair grow long, and living remote from the town, with the root of a tree for his mansion.”
XI. 130. “If he kills without malice a Vaishya, who had a good moral character, he may perform the same penance for one year, or give the priests a hundred cows and a bull.”
XI. 131. “For six months must, he perform this whole penance, if without intention he kills a Shudra, or he may give ten white cows and a bull to the priests.”
VIII. 381. “No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahmin; and the king, therefore must not even form in his mind an idea of killing a priest.”
VIII. 126. “Let the king having considered and ascertained the frequency of a similar offence, the place and time, the ability of the criminal to pay or suffer and the crime itself, cause punishment to fall on those alone, who deserve it.”
VIII. 124. “Manu, son of the self-existent, has named ten places of punishment, which are appropriated to the three lower classes, but a Brahmin must depart from the realm unhurt in any one of them.”
The Brahmin has been given by the Manu Smriti other privileges. In the matter of marriage in addition to his marrying a woman of his own class he is entitled [1] to enter into wedlock with a woman of any of the classes lower to him without being bound to the woman by the tie of marriage or conferring upon the children the right to his status or to his property. He had the
Manu III. 12-13. This privilege is recognised by Courts in India.