654
CHAPTER VIII
The Administration of Civil and Criminal Justice.— Customs connected with Usury.— Various Kinds of Punishment.— Trial by Ordeal.
The Prevalence of Perjury.— Remarks on the European Courts of Justice.
Governed from time immemorial by despotic princes, who recognized no law but their own free will and pleasure,
India has been accustomed to a form of judicial administration peculiar to herself. There has been no legal code, neither has there been any record of legal usage. There are, it is
true, a few works containing general legal principles, and a few wise legal maxims which have helped to guide the
judges in their decisions; yet nowhere have there been properly organized courts of justice. Ordinary cases have generally been settled, without any right of appeal, by the collectors of public revenue, assisted by assessors selected from the principal inhabitants and by the military officer commanding the district.
The Hindus have neither barristers nor solicitors; neither are they compelled to submit to those long proceedings and interminable delays, the cost of which often equals the value of the matter under dispute. When it is a question of dividing property or of other business of any importance,
it is generally submitted to the arbitration of relatives or of the headmen of the caste; and if the nature of the suit or
the high rank of the litigants render it advisable, all the principal inhabitants of the district assemble to decide the point at issue l.
When a case is brought before the revenue officer of the district and his assessors, no difficulty is experienced in getting them to settle the disputed they think that they
are likely to make any money out of it. Otherwise they
will easily invent some pretext for putting off the matter till some future time when they may have more leisure to
attend to it. In any important case they try their best to bring the parties to an amicable understanding; and if that
1
Since the Abbe ' s day English courts of justice have been established all over the country, and there are hosts of English barristers and attorneys and native vakils practising in these courts. In the villages, however, arbitration is still resorted to in petty cases. Ed.