The Mauryan Polity c8.s4.t7.9

c8.s4.t7.9

Elsewhere Aśoka expects these judicial officers to behave towards the people as a father towards his son. He realises that this is in a majority of cases an ideal rather than the actual. For, says he, ‘some single person only learns this (and) even he (only) a portion (but) not the whole’.¹ On the negative side Aśoka expects his judicial officers to be bereft of unhealthy dispositions like envy, anger, cruelty, hurry, want of application, laziness and fatigue. In his opinion the possession of some of these dispositions would lead to maladministration of justice, and this would in the long run retard the progress of the State.²