The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c11.36

c11.36

From this one case in which the king, influenced by the vinicchayāmacca, revises an unjust judgment, to infer a general power of this minister to pronounce an opinion upon the king's judgments, would be going too far. The right inference would be to suppose that the ministers, especially, the *vinicchayámacca* and also the *purohita* and the *senápati*, who, as we [p. 73] shall see, both took part in the administration of justice, advised the king and in some cases, had some influence upon his judgments. Also we are not in a position to draw a line between cases where the king alone pronounced the judgment and those which were judged by the ministers. That the entire province of the administration of justice did not lie in the hands of the king, although in the earliest times this might have been the case, is self-evident; the more complicated State organisation became, with a growing population and with the extension of territory, the more pressing must the necessity for a division of work have been felt, the more must the king have delegated his powers to the ministers. The legal life of the smaller towns and villages passed very much out of the direct sphere of action of the king and remained a matter for his representatives, as long as no appeal was made against the judgments of these to the king, looked upon as a higher authority. Quite in keeping with this, we also meet with a series of examples in the Jâtakas in which no mention is made of the participation of the king in the administration of justice (II. 182; V. 229). In both the narratives, the question is of quarrels between two parties, of civil cases, not of the punishment of crimes.¹