The Rashtrakutas and their Times c21.57

c21.57

Exemption from the capital punishment is another privilege claimed for the Brahmanas by a number of Smritis, and the claim is corroborated by Alberuni(38) and Bouchet(39) from whom we learn that Brahmanas were not given the extreme penalty of the law in northern India in the 11th and the southern India in the 17th century. In ancient times the sin of *Brahmahatyā* (the killing of a Brahmana) was regarded to be the most heinous one, and it seems that the Hindu state tried to avoid it, even if it was to result indirectly by way of judicial punishment, especially as it could achieve its object in another and more effective way. *Apastamba Dharma-Sūtra*(40) lays down that a Brahmana was to be blinded and banished for the offences that involved capital punishment for the other castes. That the advice of this Dharma-Sūtra writer was followed in our period is proved by the statement of Alberuni that though the Brahmana was above the death sentence he could be banished and his property confiscated, and that if he was guilty of stealing a precious and costly article he was blinded and his right hand and left foot were cut off.(41) It may be pointed out that the sentence for the theft of a precious article referred to by Alberuni is not to be found in the Smriti literature. It would, therefore, appear that the Hindu state of our period normally refrained from inflicting the capital punishment on the Brahmana, probably because the alternative punishment permitted by the Dharmaśāstra or custom was sufficiently deterrent. The life of a Brahmana blinded and banished or blinded and maimed in the right hand and the left foot was hardly better than a living death. We may, therefore, conclude that it must have been on rare occasions that the capital punishment was inflicted on the Brahmana during our period. That it was sometimes inflicted is clear from the *Arthaśāstra* of Kautalya where it is laid down(42) that a Brahmana guilty of treason should be punished with drowning, and from the *Rājatarangiṇī*.