Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.t4.39

c4.t4.39

Elsewhere³ also his appointment as a judge is only due to the fact that the king has a high opinion of his wisdom (*paṇḍito ti vinicchaye misīdāpesi.*) Here again his character as fond of bribes is revealed. He is used to dispossess the real owners and put the wrong owners in possession, thus thwarting the high ideal of justice so frequently preached in the *Jātakas*. This *purohita*-judge once gives a wrong judgment and the defeated man approaches the prince-viceroy who rectifies it, upon which the king dismisses the *purohita* from his office and places the *Kumāra* on it instead.⁴ In another instance⁵ he is represented in a better light. Here it is the *Senāpati* who conducts cases and is a bad judge, and a defeated man approaches the *purohita*, who reverses the judgment and the king being pleased with him appoints him to judgeship to try all law-suits from that time so that “it will be a joy for my ears and prosperity for the world.” These instances, stray though they are, would be sufficient to indicate the nature of his function as a judge. The *purohita* becoming a judge, was not a usual affair.⁶