The laws of Manu[71] contain a whole series of interdictions and penalties, but the selection of two or three examples must suffice, for some of them, although interesting as showing the depraved condition of mankind at that early period, are not fit for transcription into the pages of a popular work. “Any twice born (that is, regenerated) man who has _intentionally_ drunk the spirit of rice (sura) through perverse delusion of mind, may drink more spirit in flame and atone for his offence by severely burning his body.” “Or he may drink boiling hot, until he die, the urine of a cow, or pure water, or milk, or clarified butter, or juice expressed from cow-dung.” “If he tasted it _unknowingly_, he may expiate the sin of drinking spirituous liquor by eating only a little broken rice or grains of tila from which oil has been extracted, once every night for a whole year; wrapped in coarse vesture of hairs from a cow’s tail, or sitting unclothed in his house wearing his locks and beard uncut, and putting out the flag of a tavern-keeper.” There are three chief descriptions of pernicious liquor forbidden to be drunk—one extracted from sugar dregs, another from bruised rice, and a third from the flowers of madhuca (_Bassia latifolia_). These, along with eight other kinds which were consumed with the flesh of animals at certain juncates or secret feasts, were forbidden to the Brahmans, for we are told that an intoxicated Brahman “might stumble upon something very impure, or might even when intoxicated pronounce a sacred phrase of the Veda, or might do some act that ought not to be done.” Even his priestly character left him if he had been polluted with spirits, and he sank to the low degree of a Sudra. “The slayer of a priest, a soldier, or merchant drinking arrack, or a priest drinking arrack, mead, or rum, he who steals the gold of a priest” (and ...) “are all to be considered respectively as offenders of the highest degree, except those whose crimes are not fit to be named.” Terrible punishments, such as branding the forehead with a hot iron, were the penalties attached to those crimes, and “with none to eat with them, with none to sacrifice with them, with none to read with them, with none to be allied by marriage to them; abject and excluded from all social duties, let them wander over this earth. Branded with indelible marks, they shall be deserted by their paternal and maternal relations, treated by none with affection, received by none with respect. Such is the ordinance of Manu.” Nor is the punishment, terrible as it appears, supposed to end in this world, for the soul of a priest who has drunk spirituous liquors is consigned to the body of a “smaller or larger worm, or insect, a moth, a fly feeding on ordure, or some ravenous animal.”