The appeal to chance, as practised in India, bears several forms, substantially identical in principle. One mode consists in writing the words _dherem_ (consciousness of innocence) and _adherem_ (its opposite) on plates of silver and lead respectively, or on pieces of white and black linen, which are placed in a vessel that has never held water. The person whose cause is at stake inserts his hand and draws forth one of the pieces, when if it happens to be _dherem_ it proves his truth.[1115] Another method is to place in a vessel a silver image of Dharma, the genius of justice, and one in iron or clay of Adharma; or else a figure of Dharma is painted on white cloth and another on black cloth, and the two are rolled together in cow-dung and thrown into a jar, when the accused is acquitted or convicted according to his fortune in drawing Dharma.[1116] In adapting to Christian usage the ordeal of the lot, attempts were made to invest it with similar sacred symbolism, but it was not well adapted to display the awful solemnity which rendered the other forms so impressive. Notwithstanding the ample warrant for it in Scripture, and its approval by St. Augustin,[1117] it was therefore in less favor with the Church, and it seems not to have retained among the people, after their conversion, the widespread popularity and confidence enjoyed by the other ordeals. Indeed, as a judicial process, it is only to be found prescribed in the earlier remains of the Barbarian laws and customs, and no trace of it is to be met with in the latter legislation of any race. Thus mention of it is made in the Ripuarian code,[1118] and in some of the earlier Merovingian documents its use is prescribed in the same brief manner.[1119] As late as the middle of the eighth century, Ecgberht, Archbishop of York, quotes from the canons of an Irish Council a direction for its employment in cases of sacrilegious theft, as a means of determining the punishment to be inflicted;[1120] but not long after, the Council of Calchuth condemned the practice between litigants as a sacrilege and a remnant of paganism.[1121] This was ineffectual, for about 850 Leo IV. describes it as in universal use in England, and forbids it as mere divination.[1122]