40G 
COMPLAINANT AND DEFENDANT IN A SUIT. 
and where apparent or conflicting testimony is discovered, tlie mere 
circumstance of an evidence not corroborating the statement of a 
party will not subject him to the ordeal. Cases are however often 
postponed where evidences are awanting. 
A party in a suit or action who is found to have tampered with an 
evidence is nonsuited, and punished by fine, to the amount of the 
suit, and attendant costs. 
A party who declines entering a pagoda to take an oath, is deem¬ 
ed to have lost his suit, or, if a criminal matter, to be culpable. 
PJiee k,hoo , or priests, when called on as witnesses do not take 
an oath, provided they are respectable in character. They seldom 
make verbal replies but merely affirm or deny set questions by mo¬ 
tions of the taraphat, or fan of palm leaves, one of the badges of the 
order; they raise it in affirming and drop it in denying. 
Any judge or officer concerned in administering justice will be 
degraded and punished should it be proved that he had smoked 
opium and drunk spirituous liquors with a person detained in a suit 
or action, because parties are kept near the Court and watched 
that they may have as little intercourse before trial as possible with 
others concerned. Confession in civil and criminal cases supercedes 
the necessity of trial; hut in criminal actions, not being for a capi¬ 
tal offence, or one of magnitude , it entitles the person confessing to 
have a reduction of one half made in the fine commensurate with 
Ins offence. 
