The Pandyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c19.25
The Pāṇḍyan Kingdom from the Earliest Times to the Sixteenth Century c19.25
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Some evidence on the administration of justice is available, and this may be briefly reviewed. Most of the references are to criminal offences, and they do not shed much light directly on the machinery of legal administration. We learn casually that in one instance a person was tied to the leg of a buffalo-bull and dragged for having murdered a Brahmin.² Three records from the Ramnad district of the time of Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇḍya give a continuous account of a single crime and the manner in which it was dealt with.¹ A temple priest, Vāmanabhaṭṭa by name, who was returning home at night from the temple, was, for some unknown reason, hacked to death in a street by hired assassins employed by one Sattiyanāvan. The murderers took refuge in a neighbouring place and afterwards escaped from it, when attempts were made to capture them. ‘Thereupon, the belongings of Sattiyanāvan in Karuvērkuricci consisting of lands, houses, gardens and servants both male and female, were confiscated and made over, as a gift to the temple of Śokka-Nārāyaṇa.’ Subsequently, the murder of Vāmanabhaṭṭa was avenged and Sattiyanāvan was killed, we do not hear by whom or under what circumstances; then his son made an appeal, less than four months after the date of the original murder, to the authorities, the Śrīvaiṣṇavas and others connected with the temple;
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he said that he had been ruined by the confiscation of his father’s property, himself having been no party to the murder, and that he would pay 800 gold coins to the temple treasury in lieu of the confiscated property. His plea was accepted and his father’s lands, houses, gardens and servants both male and female were restored to him subject only to the additional condition that he should maintain a service (śandi) in the temple. We also learn that, in the interval, the property of another person had been confiscated, but afterwards, most of it was restored, probably because he was able to establish his innocence. Some points come out clearly in this case and these are worth noting. Justice is administered in a rough and ready manner by the local authorities of the village. A criminal who is notoriously guilty of a serious offence, in this case the murder of a Brahmin, and escapes punishment, not only forfeits his property, but becomes more or less an outlaw who may be killed with impunity by anybody. The property that is forfeited under such conditions enriches the temple, and neither the king nor the villagers seem to touch it, probably in literal fulfilment of the injunction of Manu in the matter (ix. 243). When the murderer has paid for his offence with his life, the bulk of his property is restored to his heir, double punishment for the same offence being avoided, so to say.
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A curious inscription from the Chingleput district contains a strange narrative of an organized attempt at brigandage and terrorism on the part of some unlawful persons of Ūttipākkam and the manner in which the offenders were dealt with.¹ Five Brahmins whose names are recorded, and some Veḷḷāḷas ‘gave up the duties legitimate to their caste, and following the profession of the lower classes, wore weapons, murdered Brahmins, cut off (their) ears, insulted the Brahmin ladies, committed robbery, destroyed cattle and sold them’. On a former occasion complaints had been made against these very men to the ruling authorities and they had been beaten and fined, without being actually imprisoned. But they behaved no better afterwards and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood again complained of their misdeeds to prince Poṭṭappiyārāyar, the ruler of the division, who sent a contingent of Malayāḷi soldiers to apprehend the criminals; two of the Brahmins in the gang, Ātkoṇḍavilli and Pāmbaṇaiyān, were captured and imprisoned, but not before some of the soldiers lost their lives in the conflict with them, and others were stabbed, shot with arrows, or deprived of their weapons by the bandits.
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When, some time later, the two prisoners along with some others were being taken to the king's presence, ‘the three other Brahmin brothers who were still at large and who, in the meantime, had collected together a number of people, attacked and killed the party which was leading the captive brothers to the king, liberated them and escaped. The news of this action of the rebels having reached the king, he issued the stringent orders that they be captured wherever found and punished according to the rules applicable to the lower classes, that their houses and other hereditary property be sold to temples and other charitable institutions, that the money thus realized be credited to the treasury in payment of the fine imposed on them and that the balance, if any, be presented to the temples as a permanent charity in the name of the criminals.’ We do not know how the offenders fared after their outlawry by the king, but we learn that the order regarding the sale of their properties was literally fulfilled. These occurrences belong to the reign of a Jaṭāvarman Sundara Pāṇdya who was perhaps the famous ruler of that name who came to the throne in A.D. 1251 or some later monarch. We have an instance of gross mismanagement on the part of a temple manager coupled with misconduct with ‘a Brahmin widow from a foreign country’; complaints against the manager's conduct were made by the assembly of Tirupputtur (Ramnad district) about 1291 A.D. to the ruling king Māravarman Kulaśēkhara;
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but the king's judgment is unknown as the end of the inscription (No. 125 of 1908) is lost.¹ It seems to have been the rule that all offences were in the first instance dealt with by the village officers and the village assembly of the locality, and that only when these authorities proved unequal to the task, any matter was submitted to the king's officers, or, in an extreme case, to the king himself. An inscription from Pudukkottah (No. 372 of 1906) of about the middle of the thirteenth century A.D. refers to a meeting of the inhabitants of districts, cities and villages in Kōnāḍu. The *pūjāris* of the temple of Tirunalakkuṇramuḍaiya-Nāyaṉār had made away with the cash as well as the jewels of the temple. One of them confessed to having taken a portion of the lost cash and shared it with a carpenter. The other *pūjāris* denied all knowledge of the lost property, but were implicated by the former. The lying *pūjāris* were orderd to be taken to the court (*dharmāsana*) where they were required to handle a (red-hot) ploughshare. The hands of all of them were burnt, and then they confessed their guilt. They were all ordered to be dealt with as sinners against the god Śiva (*Śivadrōhins*).² The references in this record to the *dharmāsana*—perhaps the king's court—and the ordeal of the ploughshare must be noted.
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Another record furnishes an instance of the recognition of the right of private warfare among local chieftains so long as it did not interfere with the peaceful villagers in the neighbourhood (No. 359 of 1914).