History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.84

v4.c63.84

How the king directly dispensed justice is illustrated by the rules of Gaut. XII. 40-42 and Manu VIII. 314-316 that a thief who has stolen a brāhmaṇa's gold may run with dishevelled hair to the king carrying an iron club or a heavy bludgeon of khadira wood, may declare the sin committed by him and request the king to award punishment, that the king may then strike him with the club and that whether the thief dies or lives after the king so strikes him he becomes free from the guilt. The king was also the highest court of appeal. The Rājataraṅgiṇī (VI. 14-41) states how king Yaśaskara heard the appeal of a person who had sold his house without the well, who on returning from a long absence abroad found the well usurped by the vendee and was defeated in the lower courts because the vendee had bribed the scribe to write '*kūpasahita*' instead of '*kūparahita*' and how the king decided in the man's favour by exposing the vendee with a trick: while in VI. 42-69 the same king is said to have reversed another decision about a contract by a man whose 100 coins had fallen into a well. The same work in another place (IV. 82-108) states how a brāhmaṇa wife appealed to the king of Kashmir to find out the culprit who had murdered her husband in his sleep and how the king by superhuman means held a sorcerer to be the murderer.