[6] Asiatic Researches, vol. i., p. 389. [7] Neilson’s “Trial by Combat.” [8] Thayer’s “Older Modes of Trial,” II. Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, p. 393. [9] Pattetta, Ordelie. [10] Mackay’s Delusions; Athelstane. [11] Pattetta, Ordalie. In Sophocles’ Antigone, the guards protest their innocence to Creon, of any complicity in the burial of Polynices and offer to establish their innocence by ordeal, in the following lines: “Ready with hands to bear the red-hot iron, To pass through fire, and by the gods to swear That we nor did the deed, nor do we know Who counselled it, or who performed it.” (PP. 264-267.) [12] Pattetta, Ordalie; I. Reeve’s History English Law, p. 203. [13] _Ante idem._ [14] Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions.” [15] _Ante idem._ [16] According to Jolly, the translator of this book, the materials for the text date back many centuries before Christ and some of the old laws treated of, belong to the remotest antiquity, p. XX. Rishi Narada was a celebrated Hindu Sage and Lawgiver, supposed to have been the son of Brahma and Saraswari. Mrs. Manning’s “Ancient and Med. India,” Vol. I., pp. 146, 249; Vol. II., pp. 119, 134. The ordeal of the eucharist was based upon the statement of the Apostle, construed with pious veneration and accepted literally “he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.” _I. Corinthians_ XI., 28, 29; Lea, “Superstition and Force,” (3 ed.) 304. [17] Brahma, the first person, in the Triad, of the Hindus, was the god of the fates, master of life and death, the author of the Vedas and the great lawgiver and teacher of India. [18] Institute Narada, Pt. I., c. 5, sec. 102, to Pt. II., pp. 44, 45. According to an eminent authority, ordeals are still practiced in India, in private life. Sir Henry Maine’s “Life and Speeches,” p. 426; Manning’s “Ancient and Mediaeval India,” Vol. I., pp. 146, 249; Vol. II., pp. 119, 134. From the fragments of the Avesta, which have come down to us, containing snatches of the prehistoric law of the ancient Persians, the ordeal of boiling water was a fixed, settled legal procedure, at that distant day, for it is there recorded: “Creator: he who knowingly approaches the hot, golden, boiling water, as if speaking truth, but lying to Mithra; What is the punishment for it? Then answered Ahura-Mazda: Let them strike seven hundred blows with the horse goad, seven hundred with the craesho-charaha.” This was the punishment affixed for using this particular ordeal for fraudulent purposes, just as if one trifled with one of the settled legal processes of the present day and as perjury was then prevalent, the punishment of twice seven hundred blows to the perjurer, was the penalty for using this ordeal to further perjury, or false swearing. Vendidad, Farg. IV., 156; “Records of the Past,” VII., 109; Lea, “Superstition and Force,” (3’ ed.) 233.