THE SHUDRAS : THE BRAHMANIC .... STATUS OF THE SHUDRAS 59
apostates as well as Pagans and Jews, were subjected to vexatious restrictions, particularly as regards their capacity to succeed to property and to act as witnesses. Only orthodox Christians who recognised the decisions of the four oecumenical councils had the full enjoyment of civil rights.
This survey of rights and disabilities of the Roman Law may well give comfort to Hindus that the Brahmanic Law was not the only law which was guilty of putting certain classes under disabilities, although the disabilities imposed by the Roman Law have nothing of the cruelty which characterizes the disabilities imposed by the Brahmanic Law. But when one compares the principles of the Roman Law with those of the Brahmanic Law underlying these disabilities, the baseness of the Brahmanic Law becomes apparent.
Let us first ask: What was the basis of rights and disabilities under the Roman Law. Even a superficial student of Roman Law knows that they were based upon (1) Caput and (2) Existimatio .
Caput meant the civil status of a person. Civil status among the Romans had reference chiefly to three things; liberty, citizenship and family. The status libertatis consisted of being a freeman and not a slave. If a freeman was also a Roman citizen, he enjoyed the status civitatis. Upon this quality depended not only the enjoyment of political rights, but the capacity of participating in the jus civile. Finally, the status familice consisted in a citizen belonging to a particular family, and being capable of enjoying certain rights in which the members of that family, in their quality of agnates, could alone take part.
If an existing status came to be lost or changed, the person suffered what was called a capitis diminutio, which extinguished either entirely or to some extent his former legal capacity. There were three changes of state or condition attended with different consequences, called maxima, media, and minima. The greatest involves the loss of liberty, citizenship, and family; and this happened when a Roman citizen was taken prisoner in war, or condemned to slavery for his crimes. But a citizen who was captured by the enemy, on returning from captivity, was restored to all his civil rights jure postliminii .
The next change of status, consisted of the loss of citizenship and family rights, without any forfeiture of personal liberty; and this occurred when a citizen became a member of another state. He was then forbidden the use of fire and water, so as to be forced to quit the Roman territory, or was sentenced to deportation under the empire.