History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.480.5

v4.c63.480.5

Vṛddha-Hārita (VII.209-210) says that a brāhmaṇa should be branded on the body for all those offences that entailed corporal punishment for other offenders, that he should have his head shaved, that he should be deprived of all his property and banished from the realm. The force of popular feeling on the point of exempting a brāhmaṇa offender from the death sentence was so great that Elphinstone (Governor of Bombay) in Regulation 14 of 1827, sec. IV (cl. 5) exempted brāhmaṇas and women from death sentence even for murder where public feeling would be shocked⁶³⁴. It is not to be supposed that this exemption of the brāhmaṇa from the death sentence was unanimous or universal. Kāt. (806) contains this remarkable statement:⁶³⁵ ‘Even a brāhmaṇa deserves to be killed if he be guilty of causing abortion, if he be a thief (of gold) or if he kills a brāhmaṇa woman with a sharp weapon or if he kills a chaste woman'. Kauṭilya (IV. 11) prescribes that a brāhmaṇa who aims at the kingdom or who forces entrance into the king's harem or who incites wild tribes or enemies (against his king) or who foments disaffection (or rebellion) in forts, the country or the army should be sentenced to death by drowning.⁶³⁶ The fact that Cārudatta, a brāhmaṇa, is represented as having been condemned to death by king Pālaka in the Mṛcchakaṭika indicates that the sentence of death against brāhmaṇas was not entirely unheard of. It appears from Fick's 'Social organisation' &c. p.