Administrative System of the Marathas c25.s3.14

c25.s3.14

Kautilya recommends three punishments for adultery. When any person abets a thief or an adulterer, he as well as the woman who voluntarily yields herself for adultery shall have their ears and nose cut off or pay each a fine of 500 panas, while the thief or the adulterer shall pay double the above fine.¹⁹ In a subsequent chapter dealing with sexual intercourse, Kautilya lays down, that "A woman who, of her own accord, yields herself to a man shall be slave to the king."²⁰ Again, "A relative or a servant of an absentee husband may take the latter's wife of loose character under his own protection. Being under such protection, she shall wait for the return of her husband. If her husband, on his return, entertains no objection, both the protector and the woman shall be acquitted. If he raises any objection, the woman shall have her ears and nose cut off, while her keeper shall be put to death as an adulterer."²¹ It is therefore clear that Ahili would have lost her nose, and the Koli girl would have been the king's slave like many of their fellow criminals even if they had been tried by a Mauryan court instead of a Maharashtra Nyayadhish. It should be noted at the same time that the principle laid down by Madhava Rao I had the approval of Kautilya who says "Those women who have been rescued from the hands of thieves, from floods, in famine, or in national calamities, or who, having been abandoned, missed, or thrown out as if dead in forests, have been taken home may be enjoyed by the rescuer as agreed upon."²² Narada is more explicit on this point. "A man is not punishable," says he, "as an adulterer for having intercourse with the wife of one who has left his wife without her fault, or of one impotent or consumptive, if the woman herself consents to it."²³ In the case above referred to, the woman had been abandoned by her husband and would have died of starvation, but for the food and shelter afforded to her by the man in question, and evidently she had given her consent.