Note 18 — Chapter V · Trial by Ordeal.

Institute Narada, Pt. I., c. 5, sec. 102, to Pt. II., pp. 44, 45. According to an eminent authority, ordeals are still practiced in India, in private life. Sir Henry Maine’s “Life and Speeches,” p. 426; Manning’s “Ancient and Mediaeval India,” Vol. I., pp. 146, 249; Vol. II., pp. 119, 134.

From the fragments of the Avesta, which have come down to us, containing snatches of the prehistoric law of the ancient Persians, the ordeal of boiling water was a fixed, settled legal procedure, at that distant day, for it is there recorded:

“Creator: he who knowingly approaches the hot, golden, boiling water, as if speaking truth, but lying to Mithra;

What is the punishment for it?

Then answered Ahura-Mazda: Let them strike seven hundred blows with the horse goad, seven hundred with the craesho-charaha.” This was the punishment affixed for using this particular ordeal for fraudulent purposes, just as if one trifled with one of the settled legal processes of the present day and as perjury was then prevalent, the punishment of twice seven hundred blows to the perjurer, was the penalty for using this ordeal to further perjury, or false swearing. Vendidad, Farg. IV., 156; “Records of the Past,” VII., 109; Lea, “Superstition and Force,” (3’ ed.) 233.