Note on the practice of dharnā

Note: this text is extracted from Book IX, chapter 55:

“King, I have attended on Marubhūti for two years; he has given food and clothing to me and my wife, but he will not give me the fifty dīnārs a year which he promised me in addition. And when I asked him for it he gave me a kick. So I am sitting in dharnā against him at your Highness’s door. If your Highness does not give judgment in this case I shall enter the fire. What more can I say? For you are my sovereign”

We have already (Vol. I, p.135n¹; Vol. II, p. 82) come across this curious method of intended suicide—usually employed to retrieve a debt. It consists in the creditor sitting at the door of the debtor and undergoing a prolonged fast till the guilty one pays what he owes rather than have the man’s blood on his hands, besides which the fear of his ghost for ever haunting his house is constantly before his eyes. This strange method of exacting justice is mentioned in Manu (V, iii, 49), and is well known in the Epics and Hindu fiction.

Another way of practising dharnā was to thrust a spear-blade through both cheeks and in this state to dance before the debtor’s house. Any sign of suffering shown would at once nullify the efficacy of the act. Again, the unappeased creditor sometimes stood with an enormous weight on his head, swearing never to alter his position until satisfaction was given, and pronouncing at the same time the most horrible execrations on his debtor should he suffer him to expire in that situation. This seldom failed to produce the desired effect, but should he actually die while in dharnā, the debtor’s house was razed to the earth and he and his family sold for the satisfaction of the creditor’s heirs.

Another and more desperate form of dharnā, only occasionally resorted to, was to erect a large pile of wood before the house of the debtor, and after the customary application for payment had been refused the creditor tied on the top of the pile a cow or a calf, or very frequently an old woman, generally his mother or other relation, swearing at the same time to set fire to it if satisfaction was not instantly given. All the time the old woman pronounced the bitterest curses, threatening to persecute the wretched debtor both here and hereafter. (See Russell, Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces, vol. ii, pp. 265, 266, who also gives further details on the subject.) See also ditto, vol. iv, p. 213, and the references in Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 245n⁶. —n.m.p.