Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c9.95

c9.95

Gruesome forms of execution are impaling, roasting, burning, cutting into pieces, trampling down by elephants, tearing to pieces by dogs, drowning etc. The flogging punishments are mentioned mainly for women, childeren and persons of low castes. Forced labour too appears as a public punishment as in working off a debt. In the ancient works punishment by imprisonment is rather rarely mentioned. According to M. 9, 288 prison-houses should be built on public roads so that everybody can see the suffering and disfigured criminals, who, as the commentaries elucidate it, with their bodies emaciated with hunger and thurst, disordered hair and beard, often fettered in chains and mutilated—their hands or other limbs being amputated—produce a horrible impression on the onlookers. Banishment is mostly, but never in the case of Brahmans, accompanied by the confiscation of property, and there are also other combinations of punishments.