JUSTICE IN NEPAL. 



Ill 



likewise are professional informers and public prosecutors. There are 

 none of either. The casual informer is sole prosecutor. Evidence of oral 

 testimony, of writings, of decisory oaths and oaths of purgation and im- 

 precation, is admitted in all the four courts of the capital. Ordeal is only 

 resorted to in grave cases, when oral and documentary evidence are want- 

 ing, but in such case the cause must be removed to the Inta Chapli if 

 it should not have originated there. 



The proceedings of each court remain in that court, excepting the 

 accounts of the receipts on behalf of the state from the decision of suits ; 

 these are transferred periodically to the Kumdri Chok. 



, " The first great object of the courts of Nepal, when litigants 

 come before them, is not trial, but reconcilement. The parties and 

 witnesses all clamorously urge what occurs to them (never upon oath), 

 and try their strength against each other. The general result of this 

 apparently uncomely but really effectual procedure, is to bring the parties 

 to an understanding, which the court takes care that the loser shall abide 

 by. But if the court cannot thus succeed in bringing the parties to reconcile 

 their difference or to submit it to the court's summary arbitrament, upon a 

 view of the animated exhibition just described, then, and then only, the 

 trial in our sense begins : the first step of which is to bind the parties to the 

 issue : for that is the meaning of thaping the hen, a ceremony which 

 then takes place, and here, first, oaths are permitted ; which very generally 

 are used, instead of evidence, not to confirm evidence. If the testimony of 

 external witnesses is readily forthcoming, it is taken and preferred. But in 

 general, the parties themselves must look to that point well, for the court 

 seldom cares to delay or to exert itself, in order that witnesses may appear. 

 Neither the people nor the judges deem external witnesses the one thing- 

 indispensable. If such are not readily forthcoming to give decisive testi- 

 mony, the court and country are agreed as to the propriety of at once 

 resorting to other modes of proof ; with which, though we were once fami- 

 liar with them, justice is now deemed by us to have little connection. These 



