Free Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima Page B

essential principle behind all law, a principle which he felt must exist. And this was why the concept of natural law had fascinated him for a time. But now he was more concerned to define the outer limits of natural law, which were inadvertently pointed up by its claims to universality. He enjoyed giving his imagination free rein in this direction. If the law, he thought, was to do away with the restrictions that natural law and philosophy had imposed upon man’s vision of the world since ancient times, and break through to a more universal principle (granted that such exists) would it not reach a stage where the law itself, as we know it, would cease to exist?
    This was, of course, the kind of dangerous thinking that appealed to youth. And given Honda’s circumstances, with the geometrical structure of Roman law towering so formidably in the background to cast its shadow over the modern operative law that he was now studying, it was no wonder that he found its orthodoxy rather tedious; from time to time, he therefore put aside the legal codes of Meiji Japan, so scrupulously based on Western models, and turned his eyes in another direction—to the broader and more ancient legal traditions of Asia.
    In his present skeptical mood, a French translation by Delongchamps of the Laws of Manu, which had arrived from Maruzen at an opportune moment, contained much that he found strongly appealing.
    The Laws of Manu, probably compiled over the period from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., were the foundation of Indian law. And among faithful Hindus, it maintained its authority as a legal code right up to the present. Within its twelve chapters and 2,684 articles were gathered an immense body of precepts drawn from religion, custom, ethics, and law. It ranged from the origin of the cosmos to the penalties for robbery and the rules for dividing an inheritance. It was imbued with an Asian philosophy in which all things were somehow one, in remarkable contrast to the natural law and world view of Christianity, with its passion for making distinctions based on a neatly corresponding macrocosm and microcosm.
    However, the right of action in Roman law embodied a principle that contradicted the modern concept of rights. Just as Roman law held that rights lapse when there is no possibility of redress, so too the Laws of Manu, according to the procedural rules in force in the great courts of the rajahs and Brahmins, restricted the suits that might be brought to trial to cases of nonpayment of debts and some eighteen others.
    Honda was fascinated by the uniquely vivid style of the Laws. Even details as prosaic as court procedure were couched in colorful metaphors and similes. During the conduct of a trial, for example, the rajah was to determine the truth and falsehood of the matter before him “just as the hunter searches out the lair of the wounded deer by following the trail of blood.” And in the enumeration of his duties, the rajah was admonished to dispense favors on his people “as Indra lets fall the life-giving rain of April.” Honda read right to the very end, including the final chapter, which dealt with arcane matters that defied classification either as laws or as proclamations.
    The imperative postulated in Western law was inevitably based on man’s power of reason. The Laws of Manu, however, were rooted in a cosmic law that was impervious to reason—the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. This was set out in the Laws as a matter of course:
    “Deeds proceed from the body, speech, and the mind, and result in either good or evil.”
    “In this world, the soul in conjunction with the body performs three kinds of act: good, indifferent, and evil.”
    “That which proceeds from a man’s soul shall shape his soul; that which proceeds from his speech shall shape his speech, and deeds that proceed from his body shall shape his body.”
    “He who sins in body shall be a tree or grass in the next life, he who sins in speech shall be a