Studies in Ancient Hindu Polity (Based on the Arthashastra of Kautilya), Vol. I c13.21

c13.21

We now proceed to consider the rules regarding witnesses. At the outset it is to be noticed that agents were attached to the law courts for secretly ascertaining if possible the real facts of a law-suit, and for reporting them to the judges.¹ How far the information they furnished would be followed in a particular case depended, of course, upon the discretion of the judges. They had to use their discretion with great caution, especially in cases like that instanced in the passage quoted below,² where the depositions of witnesses were inconsistent and contradictory, and consequently in conflict with the statement of the plaintiff, and where there was a divergence of the report of the "informants" from both the statement of the plaintiff and the evidence.