Theft is punished, if small, with fine; if of greater amount, with cutting off the hand; but if the thief be taken with the stolen goods upon him, it is capital. Receivers of stolen goods, and persons who harbour thieves, are liable to the same punishment as the thief. It is remarkable that, in cases of small theft, the fine of a Brahman offender is at least eight times as great as that of a Sudra, and the scale varies in a similar manner and proportion between all the classes. A king committing an offence is to pay a thousand times as great a fine as would be exacted from an ordinary person. Robbery seems to incur amputation of the limb principally employed. If accompanied with violence it is capital; and all who shelter robbers, or supply them with food or implements, are to be punished with death.
Abusive language is still more distinguished for the inequality of punishments among the castes, but even in this branch of the law are traces of a civilised spirit. Men reproaching their neighbours with lameness, blindness, or any other natural infirmity, are liable to a small fine, even if they speak the truth. Assaults, if among equals, are punished by a fine of 100 panas for blood drawn, a larger sum for a wound, and banishment for breaking a bone. The prodigious inequalities into which the penalty runs between men of different classes have already been noticed.
The offences of physicians or surgeons who injure their patients for want of skill; breaking hedges, palisades, and earthen idols; mixing pure with impure commodities, and other impositions on purchasers, are all lumped up under a penalty of from 250 to 500 panas. Selling bad grain for good, however, incurs severe corporal punishment; and, what far more passes the limits of just distinction, a goldsmith guilty of fraud is ordered to be cut to pieces with razors.
Some offences not noticed by other codes are punished in this one with whimsical disregard to their relative importance; forsaking one’s parents, son, or wife, for instance, is punished by a fine of 600 panas; and not inviting one’s next neighbour to entertainments on certain occasions by a fine of one masha of silver.
Gamesters, public dancers, and singers, revilers of scripture, open heretics, men who perform not the duties of their several classes, and sellers of spirituous liquors, are to be instantly banished the town.
Civil Law
The laws for civil judicature are very superior to the penal code, and, indeed, are much more rational and matured than could well be expected of so early an age.
The law of evidence in many particulars resembles that of England: persons having a pecuniary interest in the cause, infamous persons, menial servants, familiar friends, with others disqualified on slighter grounds, are in the first instance excluded from giving testimony; but, in default of other evidence, almost every description of persons may be examined, the judge making due allowances for the disqualifying causes.
Two exceptions which disgrace these otherwise well-intentioned rules have attracted more attention in Europe than the rules themselves. One is the declaration that a giver of false evidence, for the purpose of saving the life of a man of whatever class, who may have exposed himself to capital punishment, shall not lose a seat in heaven; and, though bound to perform an expiation, has, on the whole, performed a meritorious action.