The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c16.s1.8

c16.s1.8

Like Manu and Nārada, Bṛhaspati stresses the need of evidence, classifies witnesses and hurls anathemas against perjury, but he thinks that various motives, affection, anger or avarice, may render the testimony of witnesses nugatory. When doubts arise with regard to documentary and oral evidence, and when reasoning itself fails, particularly when the offence in question has been committed at night or in solitary places, ordeals should be employed. While Manu had been content with two, Bṛhaspati enumerated nine of them, to be administered according to the character of the accused and the nature of the charge. An ordeal must always be administered according to the established rule by persons versed in the regulations. “If it is administered against the rule, it is ineffective as a means of proving what ought to be proved.” In the system of Bṛhaspati there was a general rule that if a certain amount of money or property in question justified an ordeal for a low-class man, double the amount justified it for a middle-class man and four times as much for a high-class man. In the ordeal by balance a person who, when weighed a second time, retained his original weight, was declared innocent while he who weighed heavier was adjudged guilty. It was held that the weight of sin made the difference. "Should the scale break, or the balance or beam, or iron hooks split, or the strings burst, or the transverse beam split, he would have to be declared guilty." In the ordeal by water, an individual was immersed in water and three arrows were discharged. In the ordeal by poison, one had to digest poison " given to him according to rule, without the application of spells or antidotes." One should drink three handfuls of water in which the weapon of one's special deity had been bathed. If in a week or fortnight, no calamity happened to him, to his son, wife, or property, he was declared innocent. Or, after a fast and purification, one should chew grains of rice when the sun is not visible. If what he spits out is pure, he is innocent; if it is mixed with blood, he is guilty. If one can take out a hot piece of gold out of heated oil and butter, without one's fingers trembling or being blistered, one is declared innocent. To prove his innocence, one accused of theft should lick with his tongue without injury an iron ploughshare twelve palas in weight. The lighter ordeals are reserved for Brāhmaṇas and women. The Hindu law-givers tend to regard the oath as a kind of ordeal on the ground that it invokes supernatural agency.¹ The law of procedure in Brihaspati bears a family resemblance to the provisions in the Dharmasthīya book of the Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra.