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NÂRADA.
I, 156.
merchants, other) artizans or merchants shall be witnesses; and members of an association among other members of the same association; persons living outside among those living outside; and women among women.
*156. And if in a company (of artizans or guild of merchants) or in any other association any one falls out (with his associates), they must not bear witness against him; for they all are his enemies.
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12. Incompetent Witnesses.
*157. The incompetent witnesses, too, have in this law-book been declared by the learned to be of five sorts under a text of law, and on account of depravity, of contradiction, of uncalled-for deposition, and of intervening decease.
* 158, Learned Brahmans, devotees, aged persons, and ascetics, are those incapacitated under a text of law; there is no (special) reason given for it.
* 159. Thieves, robbers, dangerous characters,
for hire shall be witnesses for other members of the same association. Outcasts shall be witnesses for other low-caste persons. Women shall be witnesses where two women quarrel with one another. In all these cases, the qualities of the witnesses need not be tested. A. Manu VIII, 68; Vasishtha XVI, 30.
156. If in a company of traders any one member should contract an enmity towards the other members of it, they are unworthy to bear testimony against or about him, on account of their enmity towards him. Here ends the chapter on witnesses, the tenth section of the law of debt. A.
158. The reason why the persons referred to in this paragraph are excluded seems to lie in their entire renunciation of earthly interests, which renders them unfit to appear in a court of justice. See Manu VIII, 65, where one dead to the world' is mentioned among the incompetent witnesses, and other parallel passages.
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