The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c12.46

c12.46

Megasthenes remarks that Indians decided judicial cases according to unwritten laws. It seems that the Greek writer took Smriti in the literal sense of memory instead of in the sense of "the sacred tradition concerning law" which the term signified.¹ But in any case he makes it clear that there were judicial officers, for the king alone could hardly have disposed of the whole litigation even in the capital. We are told, indeed, that Indians seldom went to law but the elaborate provisions of substantive law and procedure in the Dharma Sūtras, for instance, tell a different tale. Megasthenes has left on record that theft was a thing of rare occurrence.² But the Mauryan criminal code seems to have been a stern one. "A person convicted of bearing false witness," says Strabo, "suffers a mutilation of his extremities. He who maims another not only suffers in return the loss of the like limb, but his hand is cut off. If he causes a workman to lose his hand or his eye, he is put to death." Johannes Stobaios who lived probably about 500 A.D. records a curious ordeal on the authority of Bardesanes. There was a lake of Probation. If the accused denied his guilt but refused the ordeal of the lake, he was assumed to be guilty and punished as such. If he consented to the ordeal, "they conduct him to the lake with his accusers, for these also are subjected to the ordeal by water, lest the charge they prefer should be fictitious or malevolent. On entering the water they pass through to the other side of the lake, which is everywhere knee-deep for every one who goes in. Now, should the accused be innocent he goes in and passes through without any fear and is never wet above the knee, but, if guilty, before he goes far, the water is above his head. Then the Brâhmaṇas drag him out of the water and deliver him up alive to his accusers, considering him to deserve any punishment short of death. But this is of rare occurrence, since no one cares to deny his guilt through dread of the ordeal by water.”¹ Details apart, a water-ordeal might have been known to Mauryan India.