Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c10.9

c10.9

Already Megasthenes, fragment 28, points out that in the time of peace Indian princes leave their palace, if not for sacrifice or chase, only for the purpose of giving verdicts and continue at it the whole day even when four servants massage them with wooden cylinders. In the inscriptions too the examination of law-suits appears as one of the most important virtues of the administrator, thus IA 9, 170 speaks about a Nepalese king and the Rājatar. mentions many instances of Soloman like verdicts of Kashmirian princes (6, 14 ff., 42 ff., 8, 123—156). In Nepal too even now the state council (*bhāradar sabhā*) which is presided over by the king, functions partly as the highest court of appeal in law-suits and sometimes it inflicts heavy punishments as a court of the first instance³. The same was the case in Central India in the Mahratta period when lawsuits over an amount of money exceeding 100 rupees went directly to the Raja, in other cases his court was the highest court of appeal. The king gave judgment mostly according to the advice of a Śāstrin ¹. Already in his inscriptions Aśoka prides on having established a kind of religious department (dhammamahāmāta) for the superintendence of the pious conduct of his subjects ².