________________
40
NÂRADA.
judge must extract the dart (of iniquity) from the lawsuit.
* 17. When the whole aggregate of the members of a judicial assembly declare, 'This is right, the lawsuit loses the dart, otherwise the dart remains in it.
18. That is not a judicial assembly where there are no elders. They are not elders who do not pass a just sentence. That is not a just sentence in which there is no truth. That is not truth which is vitiated by error.
iniquity which has entered a lawsuit, by employing the artsul expedients of judicial investigation. A.
17. The members of a judicial assembly' are those who have come together for the trial of a cause. A.
18. This paragraph, in the original, is a verse composed in the Trishtubh metre, and has the look of an old versus memorialis. Though the author of the Narada-smriti has incorporated it in his work, its contents do not quite fit in with his own ideas regarding the constitution of a judicial assembly, and the prominent place which he assigns to the chief judge of the king.
Digitized by Google