The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.150

v1.c17.150

On judicial matters we learn but little more than in the preceding period. Serious crimes like killing an embryo, the murder of a Brāhman, and the murder of a man occur in lists of sins together with minor defects, such as the possession of bad nails. Other more serious crimes mentioned are stealing gold and drinking the *surā*, while treachery to the king is recognised as a capital offence. There are traces of a growing sense of justice in the discussions which are recorded in the case of the accidental death of a boy through the carelessness of the king and the Purohita, who were driving in a chariot. But the procedure in cases of crime is still quite uncertain: the king may have presided and the tribe or the assessors may have judged; but for this result we can rely only on the fact that the king is said to wield the rod of justice, and that in the case of the accidental death of the boy the matter is stated to have been referred to the Ikshvākus who decided that an expiation was due. In the case of theft in the Chhāndogya Upanishad we find the axe ordeal applied, apparently under the direction of the king; but this is the solitary case of an ordeal known in Vedic literature as a part of criminal procedure. In the Sūtras we hear of the king with his own hand striking a confessed thief. On the other hand, beside the public organisation of criminal justice, there was still the system of private vengeance tempered by the wergeld. The Sūtras fix the wergeld of the Kshatriya at 1000 cows, of the Vaiçya at 100, and of the Çūdra at 10, with a bull over and above for the king, according to the text of Baudhāyana. This seems to indicate a stage when the royal power had extended sufficiently to secure that the wergeld should be accepted, and that the insult to the royal peace required the appeasement of the king and his reward for his intervention by the gift of a bull. The lower position of women is shown by one text which assigns in her case only the same wergeld as for a Çūdra. Unhappily, the texts are so vague that we cannot be certain whether the payment in the case of a Çūdra was always required or whether he might be slain with impunity by his master, as the term ‘to be slain at pleasure’ applied to him in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa suggests.