red tree, a pipal-tree (Ficus Indica), and the gods are
supposed to delight to sit among its leaves, and listen to the music
of their rustling. The deponent takes one of these leaves in his hand,
and invokes the god, who sits above him, to crush him, or those dear
to him, as he crushes the leaf in his hand, if he speaks anything but
the truth. He then plucks and crushes the leaf, and states what he has
to say.

The pipal-tree is generally supposed to be occupied by one of the
Hindu deities, while the large cotton-tree, particularly among the
wilder tribes, is supposed to be the abode of local gods, all the more
terrible because entrusted with the police of a small settlement only.
In their punchayets, Sleeman tells us, men adhere habitually and
religiously to the truth, and "I have had before me hundreds of
cases," he says, "in which a man's property, liberty, and life has
depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it."

Could many an English judge say the same?

In their own tribunals under the pipal-tree or cotton-tree,
imagination commonly did what the deities, who were supposed to
preside, had the credit of doing. If the deponent told a lie, he
believed that the god who sat on his sylvan throne above him, and
searched the heart of man, must know it; and from that moment he knew
no rest, he was always in dread of his vengeance. If any accident
happened to him, or to those dear to him, it was attributed to this
offended deity; and if no accident happened, some evil was brought
about by his own disordered imagination.[37] It was an excellent
superstition, inculcated in the ancient law-books, that the ancestors
watched the answer of a witness, because, according as it was true or
false, they themselves would go to heaven or to hell.[38]

Allow me to read you the abstract of a conversation between an English
official and a native law-officer as reported by Colonel Sleeman. The
native lawyer was asked what he thought would be the effect of an act
to dispense with oaths on the Koran and Ganges-water, and to
substitute a solemn declaration made in the name of God, and under the
same penal liabilities as if the Koran or Ganges-water had been in the
deponent's hand.

"I have practiced in the courts," the native said, "for thirty years,
and during that time I have found only three kinds of witnesses--two
of whom would, by such an act, be left precisely where they were,
while the third would be released b