Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.t6.46

c4.t6.46

The Hall of Judgment is frequently mentioned⁶ where the judges, appointed by the king,⁷ sat and attended to their daily duties. There is no reference to a definite Code of Law by which the judges were to be guided in deciding the cases, but we come across such passages as these: “he said, ‘execute justice in this way’ and he had righteous judgment inscribed on a golden plate”⁸ or “then he caused a book of judgments to be written and said ‘by observing this book ye should settle suits.’”⁹ The question of the authorship of such books “is immaterial here, and there is no reason why the existence of such useful works should be doubted, when one of the foremost duties of a government was to administer justice in the strictest sense of the term.”¹⁰ It is also possible that a body of precedents had grown up by that time.¹¹ Still, with all this, the question of deciding cases depended largely upon the personal characteristics of a judge, his nature, whim, temperament and even prejudices. For in the stories, judgment is often almost invariably associated with bribery.¹² It is rather strange to see that there was no orderly or systematic course in which the cases were decided, and the frequent mention of the upsetting of a bad judgment of one by others—like the senāpati, the princes the purohita and even an ascetic, who happened to come upon the scene and to whom the party who had lost his cause appealed for redress—is, to say the least, surprising.¹³ The one who judged rightly was applauded by the people, and then he would be formally appointed by the king as a judge. In one of such instances the king, while appointing the man to judgeship, gives the following directions as to the time and the way in which he should spend his daily routine: “It will be to the advantage of the people if you decide cases: henceforth you are to sit in judgment…. You need not judge the whole day, but….go at early dawn to the place of judgment and decide four cases; then return....and partaking of food, decide four more cases." In this way he was required to decide only 8 cases per day. This arrangement was apparently made for the convenience of an officer whose time was mostly occupied in spiritual work and we have reason to believe here and elsewhere,¹ that the court sat the whole day from morning to sun-set, after which all business was to stop.