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Penance and Punishment: Marking the Body in Criminal Law and Social Ideology of Ancient India |
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| Author |
Olivelle, Patrick
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| Source |
Journal of Hindu Studies
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| Volume | v.4 n.1 |
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| Date | 2011.05 |
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| Pages | 23 - 41 |
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| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
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| Publisher Url |
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/
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| Location | Oxford, UK [牛津, 英國] |
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| Content type | 期刊論文=Journal Article |
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| Language | 英文=English |
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| Note | Author Affiliations:
The University of Texas at Austin
jpo@uts.cc.utexas.edu |
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| Abstract | I
II
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IV
Footnotes
References |
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| Table of contents | This article deals with the twin systems of penance and punishment for offences against the moral and the penal codes found in the ancient Indian legal treatises, the Dharmaśāstras. The two systems parallel each other and often overlap and present one of the central legitimations of social structures. Both systems often mark the body of the sinner/criminal in ways that parallel the marking of the body by the rebirth process within the ideology of karmic retribution. Thus, the legal/moral codes and the religious/criminal justice systems are presented as anchored in the very working of cosmic law rather than as contingent and humanly created systems subject to historical changes.
In his groundbreaking work on criminal justice, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault (1995) presents the body as the primary site of social control over individuals articulated in the most extreme way in the torture and execution of criminals. The criminal body, bloody and mutilated, stands as both the symbol of social order restored and a warning against attempts to subvert it. Foucault begins his study with the citation of the decree for the execution of Damiens, the regicide issued on 2 March 1757:
On a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs, and calves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with sulphur, and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax, and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses, and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds. (Foucault 1995, p. 3)
The actual execution was a far more difficult and gruesome task, as seen from an eyewitness account of the event:
The horses tugged hard, each pulling straight on a limb, each horse held by an executioner. After a quarter of an hour, the same ceremony was repeated and finally, after several attempts, the direction of the horses had to be changed. … Two more horses had to be added to those harnessed to the thighs, which made six horses in all. Without success. … After two or three attempts, the executioner Samson and he who had used the pincers each drew out a knife from his pocket and cut the body at the thighs instead of severing the legs at the joints; the four horses gave a tug and carried off the two thighs after them … then the same was done to the arms, the shoulders, the arm-pits, and the four limbs; the flesh had to be cut almost to the bone, the horses pulling hard carried off the right arm first and the other afterwards. (Foucault 1995, pp. 4–5)
A parallel scene, this time in the context of carrying out a penance for an especially heinous crime, is depicted in the legal treatise of Manu. The bloody and mutilated body of the penitent parallels the tortured body of the criminal.
A man who had sex with an elder's wife should proclaim his crime and lie down on a heated iron bed, or embrace a red-hot metal cylinder; he is purified by death. Or, he should cut off his penis and testicles by himself, hold them in his cupped hands, and walk straight towards the south-west until he falls down dead.1 (Mānava Dharmaśāstra (MDh) 11.104–105) |
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| ISSN | 17564255 (P); 17564263 (E) |
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| Hits | 140 |
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| Created date | 2015.02.09 |
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| Modified date | 2020.03.10 |
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