Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 1230

COURTS OF LAW.
37
of justice, honourable men, of tried integrity, who are able to bear, like good bulls, the burden of the administration of justice.
*5. The members of a royal court of justice must be acquainted with the sacred law and with rules of prudence, noble, veracious, and impartial towards friend and foe.
6. Justice is said to depend on them, and the king is the fountain head of justice. Therefore the king should try causes properly, attended by good assessors.
7. When lawsuits are decided properly, the members of the court are cleared from guilt. Their purity depends on the justice (of the sentences passed by them). Therefore one must deliver a fair judgment.
8. Where justice is slain by injustice, and truth by falsehood, the members of the court, who look on with indifference, are doomed to destruction themselves.
competent judges are able to discharge the onerous duties of their responsible office. They must be men of ripe wisdom, acquainted with sacred law and with the ways of the world, and the king must have tested their qualifications. A. Vishnu III, 74, &c.
5. The law-books contain many utterances of the sages, which are obscure and difficult to make out. Therefore slow-minded persons, who are unable to understand them, and to refer their contents to each case in hand, must not be appointed. Welldescended persons shall be appointed, because they will avoid partiality from family pride. Veracious' persons have a natural abhorrence against untruthfulness. A. Yagñavalkya II, 2.
6. On them,' i.e. on the judges, whose qualities have been previously described. A. Vishnu III, 72; Manu VIII, 1; Yaghavalkya II, 1, &c.
7. If the king decides lawsuits justly, the assessors obtain their own absolution through the just decision. A.
8. Identical with Manu VIII, 14.
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