The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s3.t8.5

c10.s3.t8.5

In the perspective of this criminal statistics in modern Europe the India of the Gupta Vikramâdityas in the fifth century A. C. must have been a veritable utopia. For it was a land of profoundly humane legislation, almost millennial, that Fa-Hien, the Chinese traveller, found in the Hindu Empire. To say that the administration of the criminal law appeared to him milder than in China would not mean much to the modern mind. But the important point is that fines were the ordinary punishments for almost all crimes, capital punishment being all but unknown. Amputation of the right hand was the penalty for repeated rebellion, brigandage, and so forth. But even this was resorted to very rarely; and the Chinese scholar testifies to the absence of judicial torture among Hindus.¹