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ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF 



never obliged to attend long in the court. They therefore have no allow- 

 ance whatever for food or travelling expenses. 



A man of rank is treated with much consideration ; but ordinarily he is 

 required to go into court and depose like one of the vulgar. Occasionally 

 however an officer of the court is deputed to wait on him at his house, and 

 to procure his evidence by interrogatories. 



Women of rank are privileged from attendance : if their evidence be 

 indispensable, some person who has the entree of the Zendnah is deputed to 

 hear their evidence and report it to the court. 



Oral evidence is never reduced to writing at the time of utterance, nor 

 recorded. 



Documents produced in evidence remain in the court pending the dis- 

 pute, and are returned to the owners when it is over. 



Parties can always be witnesses in their own cases and always speak 

 under the same penalties for falsehood as external witnesses. 



An oath is never tendered to a witness in the first instance ; but if 

 his evidence be contradictory or dissatisfactory to either of the parties, 

 he is then sworn and required to depose afresh on oath. If he is a Siva- 

 mdrzi or Brahmanical Hindu he is sworn on the Hari Vansa; if a 

 Buddhist, on the PancJia Raksha ; if a Masuhnan, on the Koran. 



The form of swearing on the Hari Vansa is thus described. The 

 Bichdri of the court, having caused a spot of the ground of the court to 

 be smeared with cow dung,* and spread over with pipal leaves, and a 

 necklace of tulsi beads to be placed on the neck of the witness, places the 

 witness on the purified spot of ground, and causes him to repeat a sloha of 

 which the meaning is " whoso gives false evidence destroys his children 

 and ancestors both body and soul, and his own earthly prosperity," hold- 

 ing the Hari Vansa all the while on his head, and thus prepared he 



* This solemn oath is well worthy our attention. Oaths in Nepal are used generally as 

 substitutes for evidence rather than to confirm it : and the Bible, &c. prove that this was the 

 primitive notion of an oath, H. 



