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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
xii
INTRODUCTION
Merchants, artisans, courtezans, warriors and such other persons are not to be deprived of their tools and equipment in lieu of money payment; the equipment in the case of courtezans consists in hɔuse, bedding, ornaments and wearing apparel. The ostensible reason is that impoverished persons are impelled to commit crimes for their livelihood, and these crimes affect the king and the State, which should on no account render them penniless or bereft of any working equipment. For those persons eke out their living with the help of these articles; the plenitude of living is the cause of their residence in the king's territory; and the fact ’of their residence adds to the well-being of the State.
In cases where forfeiture of property (of persons other than those enumerated above) is the proper punishment, the king should be leniently disposed and take three-fourths of the whole property, leaving one-fourth for the subsistence of the guilty person. Principal offenders are to be carefully differentiated from accessories (i.e., aiders and abettors). If a person swallows poison and thereby commits suicide by flying into rage with another person, the second man is simply an abettor of the crime of suicide, and not a murderer. So his punishment should necessarily be less than that of a murderer.
As a general rule, admonition is the punishment in trivial offences, reproof in attempts to commit offences, fine in completed offences and imprisonment or hanishment in sedition. These may run together in case of habitual perpetrator of heinous offences. The award of punishments in the shape of admonition and reproof is within the control of the Brahmin Judge, while it is the look-out of the king himself that proper pecuniary and corporeal punishments are meted out to the offenders. Corporeal punishments can also be commuted into pecuniary punishments. A person sentenced to death can requite his sentence by the payment of a hundred gold coins; one, sentenced to mutilation, by the payment of fifty gold coins; and one, sentenced to transportation, by the payment of twenty-five gold coins. Fines, if not realised, should be commuted into terms of imprisonment. This rule applies to the three lower castes. The Brahmin, unable to pay the whole amount at once, may pay it by instalments.
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