Administrative System of the Marathas c16.s1.1

c16.s1.1

Shivaji's Maharashtra still retained her simple primitive method of administering justice. Elaborate rules of procedure, volumes of codified law, costly court houses were absolutely unknown. The village elders met in the Patil's office or before the village temple or under the spreading branches of a sacred fig tree to hear civil suits and administer common-sense justice. Some of these amateur judges were certainly illiterate, for they put their signs of *nangar*, *tagri*, *ghana*, or *katyar* whenever a signature was necessary. But they must have been conversant with the customary laws of their land. The *balutas* or village artisans were frequently summoned before the Panchayat to aid the judges with their invaluable knowledge of village history or tradition. But when no evidence was available, divine aid was freely invoked and the Marathas of those days had so much faith in the potency of truth that they fearlessly and sometimes with impunity grasped a red hot iron ball and plunged their hand into boiling ghi or oil to draw out a piece of metal or *rava.* These were not the only popular ordeals; ordeals by water, libation water, lamp and circumambulation of a sacred temple, were also known. The unknown author of *Shivaji Pratap* describes a peculiar ordeal of which we find no other instance. In an alleged case of adultery, two drops of blood, one each from the veins of the man and the woman, were taken and dropped into a cauldron full of boiling oil. But lo! they would not mingle; so the lady was honourably acquitted. For all we know this ordeal possibly had never been practised.