Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c9.64

c9.64

§ 41. Crimes with regard to property. Many points indicate that crimes against property were investigated at a very early period and that very energetically. Thus in ṚV 6, 45, 1 there is perhaps already a reference to an act of stealing cattle and to a class of spies corresponding to the modern Khojis¹. At all events such spies, experienced in tracking the marks of feet or hoofs, were known to the authors of the Smṛtis. When cattle and other properties are lost they are to trace the track up to its starting point; the inhabitants, the headmen or the proprietors of the village or meadow concerned have to make the required compensation excepting when they can prove that the track goes further out of that place (Nār. 14, 22 ff., App. 16—18; Y. 2, 271 f.). If the thieves cannot be caught the king is personally liable to make good the loss (Vi. 3,67 etc.); the king however may charge the loss from his officers and the guards of thieves (cauragraha, cauroddhatr, the cauroddharanikas of the inscriptions) in whose jurisdiction the robbery took place (Nār. Y. 1. c.). The tragic figure of the penitent thief who with flying hair—the sign of his submission—goes to the king with a club on his shoulder and confesses to him his crime and asks him to strike him dead (Gaut. 12, 43-45 etc.) certainly belongs to the most ancient part of the penal law; this appears to be personal dispensation of justice thinkable only in the case of petty chiefs of small tribes.