Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.t3.74

c4.t3.74

In times of peace the most prominent work for him was the administration of justice. When we shall come to discuss this aspect of administrative machinery, we shall learn that it was not quite a separate department of the state as we understand it to-day. The king is often an original tribunal, and cases directly come before him for decision. He conducted these cases in his court not only as the highest and ultimate judicial authority, as it may seem to us at first sight, but as a direct court of appeal and the nearest legal authority without any intermediate institution. This was the usual custom,¹ though we may well see that he could not have been the whole and the sole judicial authority when the number of cases increased to the extent which we notice in the stories. A regular post of a justice called the *Vinicchaya-amacca* did exist.² And besides him, other judges were also appointed by the king.³ Very often the king is prompted to summary justice. An innocent ascetic is arrested, on a false suspicion of theft, and brought before the king, and the latter pronounces the sentence at once without examining the case: "Off with him, impale him upon the stake!"⁴ Similarly another innocent man is summarily sentenced to execution by the king.⁵ Sometimes it happens, however, that a protest is made from the side of the minister of justice against an unjust judgment of the king.⁶ But this had very little influence on the normal royal authority. No exact demarcation can be made as to the cases which must go to the king and which must be decided by the judges. But as a general rule criminal jurisdiction seems, as Fick⁷ has rightly observed, to be exclusively exercised by the king. That any person other than the king can pronounce a sentence of death seems to be nowhere mentioned in the *Jātakas*. Serious crimes such as theft, adultery or bodily injury were punished by *rājaññā*, i.e., by the order of the king.⁸ To what extent the person of the king is attached to the administration of justice is beautifully expressed by the following verses: