The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.57

v1.c17.57

Our knowledge of civil law is as scanty as that of criminal law. As we have seen, land seems not to have been an article of commerce. Movable property could change hands by gift or by sale, the latter taking the form of barter. The Rigveda records that in the opinion of one poet not ten cows was adequate price for an image of Indra to be used doubtless as a fetish. The haggling of the market is once clearly referred to. The standard of value seems to have been the cow, and no coin appears to have been known, though the origin of currency may be seen in the frequent references to *nishkas* as gifts: the *nishka* most probably was an ornament in the shape of a necklace of gold or silver: at a later date the name was transferred to a gold coin. Property doubtless passed by inheritance and could be acquired originally by a man's own efforts in creation or discovery, while the dowry and the price of the bride played a considerable part in early Vedic economy, as is seen by the stress laid upon both in the Saṁhitā. Of forms of contract the only one of which we know anything was the loan, *ṛiṇa*. The Vedic Indian was an inveterate gambler, and for that among other causes he seems always to have been ready to incur debt. The rate of interest is unknown, a reference to payments of an eighth or a sixteenth may be referred either to interest or instalments of principal. At any rate, the debtor might as a result be reduced to slavery, as we learn from an interesting hymn (x, 34) where an unsuccessful dicer recites the fatal fascination for him of the dice and his consequent ruin and enslavement with its results for his family. Of civil procedure we know only so much as may be inferred from a single word, *madhyamaçī*, which may denote one who intervenes between two parties as an arbitrator, though it has also been referred to the king as surrounded by his retainers in his camp.