Crime and punishment are never far from the headlines. That’s especially been the case over the last few weeks in India. The political class insists on exemplary corporal punishment for certain crimes, while administrators approve collective punishment—though both have questionable bases in law and criminology. But ancient and medieval Indian theorists had a similarly grim view of justice. Some of the best-known Sanskrit political texts, including the Arthashastra, insisted on fines, torture, and corporal punishment—but also restrained state power in surprisingly moral ways.
Punishment for prosperity?
To ancient Indian thinkers, the world was a fish-eat-fish world. In the absence of a state and a just king, the world would revert to anarchy, or, as they called it, Matsya-Nyaya, the Law of the Fish, where the strong would eat the weak. A king must wield a “rod”—danda—to dispense punishment, ensure order, and assure prosperity for the ruled.
But the ancient idea of order and prosperity was different from ours. Sanskrit texts on statecraft, over the centuries, generally envisioned a society divided into a hierarchy of four castes, where women were considered men’s property. Castes and genders were to perform duties declared by Brahmin thinkers, not exploit each other or seek to rise above their status. To create such a society, the Arthashastra envisioned a vast network of spies, agents, and managers. Craftsmen had to be honest with their timelines or they’d be fined. Merchants could not hoard commodities or make a profit of more than 5–10 per cent, or they’d be fined. Actors could make fun of castes, regions, and affairs, but if they mocked one person too much…you guessed it, they’d be fined.
The Arthashastra wasn’t above pre-emptive justice either. In Book 4, Chapter 6, it explains that the king’s officers could detain people on suspicion. These might include smugglers and false ascetics, but also those “addicted to meat, liquor, food, delicacies, perfumes, garlands”; “someone with a low occupation or caste” and, rather perplexingly, “someone who, at the sight of the City Manager or high official, absconds, flees, remains seated without voiding excrement.” (Translation by distinguished Sanskritist Patrick Olivelle). It is unclear why bowel movements, of all things, were a matter of such suspicion.
Once arrested, a suspect could be tortured to obtain a confession, with some caveats. In Chapters 8 and 11 of Book 4, Arthashastra insists that pregnant women, or those who’d just given birth, were not to be tortured. Otherwise, women were to receive “half the normal torture”, while men could receive the “normal” torture. Which is to say: cane strokes, whip lashes, thigh binding, slaps, scorpion bites, sun exposure, and so on. Traitors were to be burned alive. If someone had defamed the king, or “licked the vessel of a Brahmin”, their tongue was to be torn out. A Brahmin was never subject to corporal punishment, but a sign of their crime was to be branded to their forehead, after which they were to be exiled.
Also read: Medieval Indian rulers prided themselves on trafficking women. Even queens weren’t safe
‘Just’ punishment?
Sanskrit-language treatises were elite prescriptions about an “ideal” state. It’s not clear whether the rest of society agreed with them—and it seems that very often, royal tyranny led to serious backlash. The Arthashastra lists exhaustive precautions to prevent coups and assassinations and exhorts the king to be just and moderate. It imagines kings as omnipotent CEOs running a massive state enterprise, which coerced and cajoled society into functioning “properly”. In addition to the punishments we’ve seen above, the Arthashastra also sought to prevent “lower” caste men from mixing with “upper” caste women. In Book 4, Chapter 13, it ordains that Kshatriyas who slept with Brahmin women were to be fined; Vaishyas stripped of their property; and Shudras burned alive.
But when all was said and done, Indian states weren’t omnipotent. There’s no evidence that any premodern state had the capacity for mass surveillance envisioned by the Arthashastra. And so, Sanskritic texts insist that royal punishments had to be seen as just and acceptable. As such, later texts on statecraft, such as the 10th-century Nitivakyamrita of Somadeva, warn the king that “punishment awarded injudiciously generates hatred and opposition”, and that “even a crore taken away on account of a fault does not afflict, but even a stalk of grass captured by injustice pains the subjects.” In fact, the Arthashastra declares that if the king fined people unjustly, he was to pay 30 times the amount (to Brahmins). And even in the application of torture, the Arthashastra maintains some moral safeguards. A prisoner was only to be tortured on alternate days, and receive a single type of punishment at a time. Prison officials who ordered extrajudicial executions, or prevented prisoners from sleeping and eating, were to be fined. And there was little concept of “collective punishment”, as we’d recognise it today—at least in the judicial texts. We know from other sources that kings did not hesitate to brutalise defiant villages.
As we’ve seen in earlier editions of Thinking Medieval, historical reality rarely corresponded to the idealisations of erudite Brahmins. Indian society played by its own rules: social divisions were not clear-cut and usually formed without any state involvement. But the ideas of ancient thinkers are both challenging and informative—even if they didn’t correspond to historical reality or contemporary visions of an ideal society.
Ancient thinkers considered all means justified but still understood that the state must not be arbitrary. Subjects must perceive the state as stern but fair, striving for their benefit, and bound by the same rules. Should the contract between the ruler and ruled break down, the consequences would be disastrous. Contemporary India has a larger, more diverse, and more vocal citizenry than any ancient kingdom: the executive and judiciary would do well to examine these lessons.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of Lords of the Deccan, a new history of medieval South India, and hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti. Views are personal.
This article is a part of the ‘Thinking Medieval‘ series that takes a deep dive into India’s medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)