Mughal Administration c10.s5.28

c10.s5.28

We are told in the *Hedaya*, a Persian compilation of Islamic law according to the Hanafi school of jurists drawn up by Mulla Tajuddin, Mir Muhammad Husain, and Mulla Shariatullah about 1780, that the above punishments should be inflicted according to the offender’s rank, and that imprisonment and scourging were to be confined to the third and fourth grades of the people,—the petty traders and common labourers, respectively, (or as Manu would have put it, the Vaishyas and Shudras),—while the lighter forms of punishment were reserved for the nobility and gentry! (*Hedaya*, 203-204; full details in Hughes, 632-634.)