Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s19.49

v1.c3.s19.49

(1) Criminal Law.—The crimes recognized in Vedic literature vary greatly in importance, while there is no distinction adopted in principle between real crimes and what now are regarded as fanciful bodily defects or infringements of merely conventional practices.⁴ The crimes enumerated include the slaying of an embryo (*bhrūṇa*),⁵ the slaying of a man (*vīra*),⁶ and the slaying of a Brahmin,⁷ a much more serious crime. Treachery is mentioned in the Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa⁸ as being punishable by death, as it was punished later.⁹ But there is no trace of an organized criminal justice vested either in the king or in the people. There still seems to have prevailed the system of wergeld (Vaira), which indicates that criminal justice remained in the hands of those who were wronged. In the Sūtras,¹⁰ on the other hand, the king's peace is recognized as infringed by crimes, a penalty being paid to him, or, according to the Brahminical textbooks, to the Brahmins. It may therefore reasonably be conjectured that the royal power of jurisdiction steadily increased; the references in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa to the king as wielding punishment (Daṇḍa) confirm this supposition. Whether, as the analogy of other systems suggests, the king was assisted in his judicial duties, as he undoubtedly was later, by assessors, presumably of the Brahmin caste, cannot be made out clearly.¹¹