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172 INDIA AS DESCRIBED IN DARLY TEXTS
by the rājā or President. One of the termediate courts was a tribunal congruituted by representatives of the eight confederate clans (atthakulikā). The lower court could acquit the accused on its own authority but in order to punish him, had to refer the case to the next higher court.1
Along with the prevention of famine, the suppression of thieves (corā) was one of the principal tests of a successful reign. The 'famines, distinguished in the Divyāvadāna (p. 131) into three kinds—Cañcu, Svetästhi (= Pali Setaţthika) and Salākāvștti, occurred mainly on account of the dearth of rain-water (anāvrsti). But the failure of crops or scarcity of food was due as well to floods, the action of fire and similar other causes. The Divyāvadāna preserves a tradition of a twelve-year-famine of the Svetāsthi type which caused a dire distress to the people of Kāsī; the Vinaya. Pitaka mentions a famine which broke out in Northern India during the Buddha's time and the Jaina tradition refers to one during the reign of Candagutta Moriya.
The coras, as distinguished from ordinary thieves, were as follows:- burglars (sandhichedakā), plunderers of villages (gāmaghātacorā), highway robbers (panthaghātacorā), message
1 Law, Some Kpatriýa Tribes of Ancient India, pp. 102-103. 2 Vinaya, iii, p. 6; iv, p. 23.
- $ Samyutta, ü, p. 188,
