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X, 8.
ORDEALS.
315
X. ORDEALS.
1. A forger of gems, pearl, or coral, one withholding a deposit, a ruffian, and an adulterer, shall be tested by oaths or ordeals in every case.
2. In charges relating to a heavy crime or to the appropriation of a deposit, the king should try the cause by ordeals, even though there be witnesses.
3. When a thing has happened long ago or in secret, or when the witnesses have disappeared long ago, or are perjured all of them, the trial should be conducted by having recourse to an ordeal.
4. The balance, fire, water, poison, and, fifthly, sacred libation; sixthly, grains of rice; seventhly, a hot piece of gold, are declared (to be ordeals).
5. The ploughshare is mentioned as the eighth kind, the ordeal by Dharma (and Adharma) as the ninth. All these ordeals have been ordained by the Self-existent (Brahman).
6. Truth, a vehicle, weapons, cows, seeds, and gold, venerable gods or Brahmans, the heads of sons or wives:
7. By these have oaths been ordained, which are easy to perform and proper for trifling occasions.
8. When a quarrel between two litigants has arisen regarding a debt or other charge, that ordeal
X, 1-3. Vîram. p. 114.
4. M. Macn. X, 1, 2 (uncertain); Vîram. p. 225.
5. Vîram. p. 225. For a description of the ordeal by Dharma and Adharma, see the laws of Pitâmaha.
6, 7. Vîram. p. 226. See Manu VIII, 114; Nârada I, 19, 248 (above, p. 100).
8. Tod. rinâdishu tu kâryeshu visamvâde parasparam divyam samkhyânvitam deyam purushâpekshayâ tathâ |||
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