Ritual Faults, Sins, and Legal Offences
Résumé
In this chapter I show how temple mediums and judges share some similarities: they both arbitrate cases, interpret or establish "facts" and "truth", and they pronounce judgments and verdicts. In one case the arbiter is a god's medium, who speaks on behalf of a village deity; in the other it is a professional judge who speaks on behalf of a State court. Most importantly, from the perspective of the present volume, both the mediums and the judges, especially those from Higher courts, make reference to the notion of sin in order to interpret the evidence that has to be judged. In fact, although Indian courts appear to be secularized contexts of judgment and of decision-making as far as the trial proceedings are concerned, a religious or moral understanding of sin emerges, particularly in judicial rulings.
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