Hindu Administrative Institutions c10.s1.27

c10.s1.27

The term *madhyamasi* in the Vedic texts seems to indicate that he must have been an arbitrator in the strict sense and not a judge. The civil procedure amounted to a voluntary arbitration. Did the Vedic laws exercise a moral check on the civil population is a moot question considered at length by Professors Macdonell and Keith. After refuting Zimmer’s view as regards the exposure of children and the aged, the learned authors accept the existence of prostitution as a regular institution besides adultery and incest in practice.¹ That these were condemned as offences is obvious. Thus the law was both legal and moral. It was in that way half-law, half-morality. It would then appear that in the Vedic period generally though a distinction was made between civil law and criminal law, law and morality, still there was very little judicial organization or procedure of the law. Justice as a distinct branch of the Government was in the making, towards the close of the classical period. For the *Dharmasūtras* and the epics not to speak of the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭalya deal with an elaborate and complex machinery of the judiciary which manifests that a settled society had come into being and in its wake, a code of law.