The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c23.36

c23.36

In the twelfth century, Kumārapāla, king of Gujarāt in Western India, after his conversion to Jainism in A. D. 1159, took up the doctrine of the sanctity of animal life with the most inordinate zeal, and imposed savage penalties upon violators of his rules. An unlucky merchant, who had committed the atrocious crime of cracking a louse, was brought before the special court at Anhilwāra and punished by the confiscation of his whole property, the proceeds of which were devoted to the building of a temple. Another wretch, who had outraged the sanctity of the capital by bringing in a dish of raw meat, was put to death. The special court constituted by Kumārapāla had functions similar to those of Asoka's Censors, and the working of the later institution sheds much light upon the unrecorded proceedings of the earlier one.³