The Colas c25.42

c25.42

Justice, like legislation, was very largely a matter of local concern, and minor disputes were settled by one or other of the corporations to which the disputants belonged. The village assemblies exercised large powers in such matters and settled, sometimes by means of small committees of *nyāyattār*, affairs that did not fall within the jurisdiction of the occupational or voluntary groups in the locality. The *dharmāsana* is mentioned in several inscriptions¹¹⁹ as the place to which persons in charge of charitable endowments undertake to remit the fines due from them in cases of default. Though this is not quite certain, it seems most likely that the *dharmāsana* was the king's court of justice and that in deciding matters brought before it, the court was assisted by the presence of learned Brahmins versed in the law, the *dharmāsana-bhaṭṭas* as they are called in the inscriptions. On the nature of judicial records, if any, or the details of judicial procedure, we learn nothing from the inscriptions; and in our extremity, we have to turn to the story of a mythical trial preserved in a literary work, written most probably in the reign of Kulōttunga II.