vyavahAra sthApana - determining valid and invalid transactions

The first aspect of dharmasthIyam is establishment of what transactions are valid and what are not. A legal suit can only be filed on valid transactions.

vyavahAra sthapana: A transaction taken place in absence of the party, done in closed manner without a witness, those carried out in the night, those who have been carried out in the forest (not in an administrative jurisdiction), those that are done by fraud or those in secret are INVALID.

The transactions in absence (tirOhitam) are many ways. If the money or things given in the absence of its owner (swami tirOhitam), a fixed asset transaction happening in a different place (dESa trirOhitam), a transaction based on an expired document (kAla tirOhitam) and a new transaction happening in absence of the document of a previous transaction (kriyA tirOhitam)

There are exceptions to the above rule. For example the transactions that happen between two fraudulent people need to be investigated. Those transactions happen in night naturally those who are active in night like vESyas and liquor sellers also need to be accepted investigation. A marriage called gandharva vivAha with mutual consent of the major bride and groom is valid. The transactions between forest dwellers, merchants travelling through forests are valid. and so on...

All the transactions that are concluded with full title, in proper time and place with administrative evidence are valid. And if there are multiple documents available the latest one is authoritative except in the case of a pledge. (in the pledge the oldest is authoritative)

vivAda pada nibandham: The second part is to document the complaint. When someone approaches the court, all the details of the complaint including the details of first party who is making the complaint and the second party i.e., the opponent, date and time of complaint, the office at which the transaction is carried out; details of the complaint in chronological order to be recorded by the writer at the court.

My notes:
The society runs on carrying out transactions. The leader / king will not influence the transactions between the members of society. When there is a litigation or disagreement between the parties involved in a transaction, the first thing is to establish the validity of the transaction under the litigation.  All the transactions are expected to be done in a fair manner with a witness and necessary administrative evidence of registration.

There are fines for filing false suites. Cases need to be dealt based on priority even when the formal complaint is not registered in the event of minors, women and other persons who can't fight the legal battle when it comes to notice of the court.

1. The Law, 2. the particulars of the transaction, 3.the conduct of parties involved and finally the 4. order of the King are progressively stronger / powerful in deciding the result of any case.

The law is based on Truth; transaction is based of witness; past conduct is based on social view; and the order of King is based on consideration of all the other things.

When a King gives the punishment to the wicked King goes to heaven by upholding his own dharma. Otherwise, along with the wicked, king also goes to the hell. (Hell is nothing but a kingdom where the law and order are not there!)

dharmasthIyam - An introduction

At the end of the last post, we have completed two adhikaraNas of artha SAstra. The first one is vinayAdhikaraNam dealing with the coaching needed to the King / Leader and the second one is adhyaksha-pracAraH dealing with the establishment of governance structure in the territory.

The third adhikaraNa is called dharmasthIyam which roughly means "the subject relating to the dharmastha i.e., enforcer of the dharma i.e, righteousness or Law" - A judge.

This book is divided into 20 adhyayas and deals with several intricate subjects relating to the administration of justice.

धर्मस्थाः त्रयस्त्रयोऽमात्याः जनपदसंधि संग्रहण द्रोणमुख स्थानीयेशु व्यवहारिकार्थान् कुर्युः

Three dharmasthas of the rank of amAtyas should look after the vyavahAras of janapada, sangrahaNa, drONamukha and sthAnIyas.

We have seen the divisions of territory here - http://sastra-artha.blogspot.in/2013/06/janapadas-on-forming-self-contained.html

The enforcers of Law are at the same rank as an amAtya. The primary responsibility is to take care of the vyavahAra i.e., transactions happening in the administrative unit.

The Leader/King is the chief of dharmasthas as well and the primary objective of the judiciary system in my opinion in the words of cANakya is:

चतुर्वर्णाश्रमस्यायं लोकस्याचार रक्षणात्
नश्यतां सर्वधर्माणां राजधर्मः प्रवर्तकः

This world's AcAra (orderly progress) is based on four fold varNa and Ashramas. Without protection from the king this AcAra will perish. So all the dharma is promulgated by the rAja dharma or kings order which is propagation of right order in the society living in the territory.

More on trivarga (the goal of artha SAstra) - http://sastra-artha.blogspot.in/2013/04/tri-varga-and-its-opposite.html

I will try to summarize each of the adhyayas of dharmasthIyam in future posts.

Other important portfolios

In this post I am going to summarize the rest of the chapters of book II - adhyaksha pracAraH.

nAvAdhyaksha - Controller of shipping - chapter 28 - deals with civilian shipping and water ways for transporting the goods within the territory. There are guidelines to provide transport of goods, animals and people at various charges. Pregnant women, children, senior citizens, sannyasis and brahmaNas are given special free permit to use the services.

gOdhyaksha - Director for cattle welfare - chapter 29 - deals with dividing the cows into groups of 100 and assigning the caretakers for each group. For different kinds of cattle different routines apply. In each group 4 to 6 vRshas (bulls) need to be there to help reproduction. Different uses of produce from the cattle explained in detail in this chapter. Never a cow should be killed. All the death of cattle need to be recorded along with the reason for death by the gOdhyaksha.

Chapter 30 deals with the Superintend of horses - asvAdhyaksha - His responsibilities include taking care of horses that are naturally within kingdom, those who have been gifted by other kings etc., During various phases of horse's life, the amount of feed and treatment for different conditions have to be understood and attended for.

Hasti adhyakshaH, hasti pracAraH (Chapter 31 and 32) deals with Superintend of Elephants and the activity of Elephants. It is interesting to read about various activities of elephants of four classes: damyam is the one which is under training. sAmnAhyam is the one used for military purposes in the wars. One used as vAhana (for riding) is aupavAhyam. One which can't be trained is vyAlam.  The adhyaksha should take care of training, treatment for various conditions, capturing new elephants etc.,

Chapter 33 deals with commanders of different forces - of tanks (rathas), of foot-soldiers and army. The rathAdhyaksha works very closely with the asvAdhyaksha. The sEnApati is the one who is well versed in all sorts of war techniques and supported by individual adhyakshas. He is responsible for training the whole army and establishing the signals using various musical instruments and banners on their course of action.

mudrAdhyaksha takes care of issuing the passports to the people wishing to leave to other countries and visas to those who are entering the kingdom. vivItAdhyaksha takes care of pasture lands that are in between the janapadAs.

Most important system of kauTilya's state is samAharta. It is like today's police force and revenue force together. Each janapada is divided into four parts and each part has one divisional officer responsible for knowing the number of villages, number of households in each village based on their demographics and professions. So, complete census, the income and expenditure of each village, how many soldiers are in the army from each village is also tracked. They are also responsible to appoint informers across the villages to regularly report all administrative and home safety related changes in their own patches depending on the changes that take place. (This is chapter 35)

nAgarika praNidhi is the chapter 36 and last topic of adhyaksha pracAraH. - This highlight is the administration and police vigilance comes all the way down to at the maximum 40 households.This officer called as gOpaH who takes care of 10, 20 or 40 households. As the gOpaH is responsible for welfare of the households he has complete idea of the number of members, their characters etc.,

Rules are given for running the nagara or the city. Special events, utsavas have different set of rules. Times should be followed by all the citizens for various activities. Any unsocial behaviour attracts punishment almost immediately. Each house owner has the responsibility to report any irregularities observed to the gOpa. This applies strictly to the doctors as they treat anyone unknown to them they need to report.

In my honest feeling, what we are missing is this strong social bonding in the modern world. With so much of new technology and methods to establish identity, we are still failing due to not having this level of distributed administration / governance in the modern day. It is not difficult to achieve. But there is no will in today's governments to achieve this.

With this post, we complete touching all 36 chapters of the book II of artha SAstra which started with http://sastra-artha.blogspot.in/2013/06/adhyaksha-pracarah-centralising.html

A total of 57 chapters are covered or rather "touched upon" in this blog in 40 posts.

Supervisors of liquor, animal slaughter and courtesans

After a gap of about 2.5 months, I am restarting to post on Artha SAstra today. We have covered till 24th chapter of book 2 - Adhyaksha pracAraH in the last post.

I make an attempt to summarize three chapters in this post.
25th adhyAya - surAdhyakshaH - Superintend of spirituous liquors.
26th AdhyAya - sUnAdhyakshaH - Superintend of animal slaughter
27th AdhyAya - gaNikAdhyakshaH - Superintend of courtesans

cANakya considered the matters related to today what we call as "Night Life" very diligently.

surAdhyaksha:

The surAdhyaksha is responsible to establish the places of brewing and selling of liquors within the kingdom. There are fines applied if the liquors are made or sold in any other places than where it is approved. The ill effects of liquor are "maryAdAtrikramaNa bhayAdAryANAm; utsAhana bhayAt ca tIkhsNAnAm." i.e, the good people in the influence of liquor can cross the limits of law; and the evil minded will take up to criminal activity"

So, it is important to keep the people who are in the influence of alcohol indoors. So, each place selling liquor should have the facilities for the stay of those who have consumed the liquors. The activities happening in the pAnaSAla (a bar / pub) should be monitored by spies.

Details of various liquors made by different grains, fruits and other materials is given according to the qualities.

All the private players who are in the business of liquor should be taxed for both the stock of liquor they keep (16th part) and tax on daily sales (20th part) and most importantly they should be kept under right conduct all the way through the process....

sUnAdhyaksha:

It is the responsibility of the sUnAdhyaksha to keep at least 1/6 th of all animals in various protected forests. Fines are applied if anyone injures the animals in the protected parks.

Of the rest of animals and birds the young ones and the ones who are capable of still reproduction should not be slaughtered.

should make sure the sold meat is not of bad quality. Fines applied for selling bad meat.

gaNikAdhyaksha:

The laws related to courtesans applies to all the entertainers like actors, dancers, singers, musicians, story-tellers, bards, rope-dancers, showmen etc., All these entertainers have a good chance of making money during the period that they can perform but they would need to be taken care when they turn old and not able to perform. The old entertainers welfare is taken care by the gaNikAdhyaksha by showing alternative employment at that time.

Specific to the courtesans, based on the beauty and skill in arts they are appointed in the king's court to attend to the king. They also be used in getting the information about the wicked, spying, and damaging the wicked doers by the skill of talking multiple languages and performing to attract those evil doers.

So, it is important to understand and put each of the profession within the kingdom in necessary regulation and govern it. Some may be socially not accepted but a king can't exclude them. All inclusive governance is the mantra of cANakya.


This brings us to the end of 27th chapter of book 2 of artha SAstra.