History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.372

v4.c62.372

Another important responsibility of the king concerned thefts. Aśvapati, king of Kekaya, boasted that in his kingdom there was no thief, no close-fisted person, no drinker of wine, (Chān. Up. V. 11. 5). Āp. Dh. S.²⁰⁹ (II. 10. 26. 6–8) lays down that the officers should protect a city against theft for one *yojana* round it and in the case of villages for one *krośa* round them and that whatever is stolen within those limits must be returned to the owners by the officers. Gautama X. 46–47, Manu VIII. 40, Yāj. II. 36, Viṣṇudharmasūtra III. 66–67, Śānti 75. 10 prescribe that the king should recover from the thief stolen property and restore it to the owner (without distinction of caste), that if he cannot restore it he should compensate the sufferer from his own treasury, and that, if he retained the property recovered from a thief or did not make efforts to catch the thief and compensate the owner, the king incurred sin. Kauṭ. III. 16 contains a similar rule.²¹⁰ Viśvarūpa on Yāj. II. 38 quotes a prose passage²¹¹ of Bṛ. with a similar import. The Viṣṇudharmottara²¹² (II. 61. 52) remarks that if a person is robbed by his own servants then he (the king) may endeavour to recover it from the servants (by threatening or beating them), but need not restore it from his own treasury. Yāj II. 270–272, Nār. (pariśiṣṭa 16–21) and Kāt.²¹³ give further directions, viz. the thief should be made to restore the property stolen or its price; if the thief cannot be found the officers and wardens of the country pay the price of the stolen articles; the property stolen in the village should be made good by the headman of the village, if the thief's foot-steps are not traced as going out of the village; if the theft takes place in a pasture land or forest (and the thief is not found), the owner of it should be made to pay; if however the theft is not committed in a forest but on the road then the officers appointed to arrest thieves should be made to pay; the whole village may be made to pay the compensation when the theft is within the boundaries of a village but outside the limit of the residential quarters, if the footsteps of the thief are not traced as going out of the village; if the theft takes place beyond one *krośa* from a village then the surrounding five or ten villages may be made to pay the compensation. Yāj. II. 271 and Kāt. mention an officer called ‘cauroddhartā’ (‘or coroddhartā’). The ‘cauroddharaṇika’ (thief-catcher) is an officer mentioned in numerous inscriptions e. g. in the Palitana plates of Dharasena II of Valabhi in Gupta year 252 (E. I. vol. XI at p. 83), in the inscription of Nārāyaṇapāla where we have both cauroddharaṇika and koṭṭapāla, modern Kotwal (I. A. vol. XV p. 304) and in the grant of Ballālasena quoted above (p. 153, n. 191). Kauṭilya IV. 13 also gives similar rules and mentions an officer called ‘corarajjuka’ who has to make good the loss of merchandise by theft between two villages or lands that are not pasture lands.