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VIII, 20.
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14. Where justice is destroyed by injustice, or truth by falsehood, while the judges look on, there they shall also be destroyed.
CIVIL AND CEREMONIAL LAW.
15. Justice, being violated, destroys; justice, being preserved, preserves: therefore justice must not be violated, lest violated justice destroy us.'
16. For divine justice (is said to be) a bull (vrisha); that (man) who violates it (kurute 'lam) the gods consider to be (a man despicable like) a Sudra (vrishala); let him, therefore, beware of violating justice.
17. The only friend who follows men even after death is justice; for everything else is lost at the same time when the body (perishes).
18. One quarter of (the guilt of) an unjust (decision) falls on him who committed (the crime), one quarter on the (false) witness, one quarter on all the judges, one quarter on the king.
19. But where he who is worthy of condemnation is condemned, the king is free from guilt, and the judges are saved (from sin); the guilt falls on the perpetrator (of the crime alone).
20. A Brahmana who subsists only by the name of his caste (gâti), or one who merely calls himself a Brahmana (though his origin be uncertain), may, at the king's pleasure, interpret the law to him, but never a Sûdra.
15. This admonition must be addressed by the assessors to a judge who acts against the law (Gov., Kull., Râgh.). Nand. reads vah, 'you,' instead of nah, 'us.'
18. Gaut. XIII, 11; Baudh. I, 19, 8. Sabhâsadah, 'the judges,' means according to Gov. 'all those in court who look on.' The judge and his assessors are, however, the persons really intended.
20. 'One who subsists only by the name of his caste,' i.e. 'a man of Brahmana descent, who neither studies nor performs any other
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