Report No. 76

1.13. Dr. P.N. Sen's view.-

The great Hindu jurist, Priyanath Sen, thinks that "the three arbitration courts could only decide disputes which came within their special province, being disputes relating to matters which, from their very nature, fell within their special knowledge, for instance, disputes regarding trade and other local concerns.

These local courts had a sort of delegated authority within their limited spheres, but their decisions were subject to appeal in the following order; a case having been decided by a family, an appeal lay to the corporation, by a corporation to the community, and by a community to the officers appointed by the King, or in other words, to the court properly constituted to try all disputes. According to Narada, a decision arrived at by the king's court from which the king is absent is appealable to the king himself.1

1. Dr. Priyanath Sen's Tagore Law Lectures, 1909 on The General Principles of Hindu Jurisprudence, p. 363, cited by Dr. P.B. Gajendragadkar in his address to the Fifth International Arbitration Congress, Proceedings of the Fifth International Arbitration Congress, (7-10-January, 1975), pp. BI-3 to BI-4.