State and Government in Ancient India c19.s1.49

c19.s1.49

Pleaders rarely figure in the ancient Indian judicial system. It is argued by some that Manu refers to a pleader by the term *Vipra* (Brāhmaṇa) when he points out how the witnesses, the sureties and the judge labour for others and how *Vipra* (Brāhmaṇa), the creditor, the merchant and the king profit in the transaction.¹ This is quite possible, but we cannot exclude the possibility of the *Vipra* referred to here being a member of the jury (*sabhya*), who might have received an allowance. A very clear case of a lawyer pleading for a party for a fee occurs in Asahāya’s commentary upon *Nārada-Smṛiti*, where one Smārtadurdhara instigates a party not to pay the debt and undertakes to secure exemption from a law court in this connection, if he is paid the fee of a thousand *drammas*.¹ Śukra also refers to the practice of appointing recognised agents in the law courts to defend a case when a party was himself unable to do so owing to his other preoccupations or ignorance of the law. Such agents were known as Niyogins and they were expected to guard the interests of their parties very carefully. If they colluded with the other party, they were punished by the state.² The lawyer's fee varied from 6% to ½% according to the value of the property; the larger the corpus of the property, the smaller was the percentage of the fee. It is therefore clear that when the law and legal procedure became complex from about 500 A. D., scholars well trained in Smṛitis were often engaged by the parties to represent their cases. Such cases however were not frequent, and there is no evidence to show that there was a regular class of persons in ancient India, whose profession and status were the same as those of the modern lawyer and whose members were licensed by the state to follow the profession.