Kautilya's Maxims
23
Priority of Claim
(ArS 3/19:19-21)

The Teachers: In a case of assault, the one who first comes to court wins, since only one unable to bear the injury will seek redress.

Kautilya: No matter which party is the first to approach the court, the case shall be decided by the testimony of witnesses. If there are no witnesses, the injury or other evidence shall be decisive.

Kautilya grants no bonus to the litigious person per se. The previous rule is a presumption in favor of the first complainant as being the injured party. This is psychologically intelligible, though it ignores the possibility of pre-emptive counter-claims. In Roman law, there was an advantage in being the accuser rather than the defendant. Here, we infer that this advantage had been exploited by unscrupulous persons. Kautilya's rule is designed to eliminate that advantage, and, as so often, to judge according to the circumstances.

Implicit in Kautilya's willingness to rely on wounds as evidence of injury is the existence of some sort of forensic medicine. For the way a parallel tradition treats the description and legal interpretation of wounds, including the detection of self-inflicted and thus juridically fraudulent wounds, see the 0217 Chin law codes of Shweihudi (Hulsewé Ch'in 192).

 

Kautilya's Maxims is Copyright © 2001- by E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks

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