Mughal Administration c10.s2: § 2. Description of trials held by the Emperor.
Mughal Administration c10.s2
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§ 2. Description of trials held by the Emperor.
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This division of judicial work is noticed by the early European travellers. William Finch writes in 1611:
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"The castle of Agra has four gates,...one to the west, towards the Bazar, [is] called the *Kachari* gate, within which, over against the great gate is the qazi’s seat of chief justice. Over against this seat is the *kachari* or Court of Rolls, where the king’s wazir sits every morning some three hours, by whose hands pass all matters, rents, grants, lands, *farmans*, debts, &c....Tuesday is day of blood, both of fighting beasts and justiced men, the king judging and seeing
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execution" [carried out in the plain on the river bank, below the *darshan* balcony.] (Purchas, iv. 72, 73).
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Five years later, Terry observed,
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"The Emperor himself moderates in all matters of consequence which happen near his Court, for the most part judging *secundum allegata and probata*. Trials are quick and so the executions. The governors in cities and provinces proceed in like form of justice. I could never hear of law written among them : the king and his substitutes' will is Law." (*Ibid*, ix. 47.)
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Aurangzib's manner of doïng justice is thus described by Bernier, an eye-witness :
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"All the petitions held up in the crowd assembled in the Hall of Public Audience are brought to the king and read in his hearing ; and the persons concerned being ordered to approach are examined by the monarch himself, who often redresses on the spot the wrongs of the aggrieved party. On another day of the week he devotes two hours to hear in private the petitions of ten persons selected from the lower orders and presented to the king by a good and rich old man. Nor does he fail to attend the justice-chamber, called *Adalat-khanah* on another day of the week, attended by two prïncipal *qazis*." (Bernier, 263.)
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Manucci describes the scene of the royal dispensation of justice :
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"The king holds public audience in the *Amkhas* [meaning the *Diwan-i-am*], and there it is usual for aggrieved persons to appear and make complaint.
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Some men demand punishment for murderers, others complain of injustice and violence or other such like wrongful acts....The king ordains with arrogance, and in few words, that the thieves be beheaded, that the governors and *faujdars* compensate the plundered travellers....In some cases he announces that there is no pardon for the transgressor, in others he orders the facts to be investigated and a report made to him.” (*Storia*, ii. 462.)