Adhyaya 252

Agni begins a jurisprudential manual within the Dhanurveda stream, defining vyavahāra as discerning naya from anaya and explaining it through layered fourfold schemes: four parts, four bases, and fulfillment by four policy-means. Adjudication is grounded in dharma, courtroom procedure, customary practice (caritra), and royal ordinance (rāja-śāsana), stressing the interplay of claim and reply and the central role of witnesses. The chapter lists the classical eighteen titles of dispute—debt, deposits, partnerships, revocation of gifts, service and wages, sale by a non-owner, non-delivery, bad bargain, breach of convention, land disputes, marital matters, inheritance, violence, verbal insult and bodily assault, gambling, and miscellaneous cases—said to branch into a hundred subtypes by human action. Agni then sets out court ethics (impartial sabhyas, learned brahmanas), documentation protocols, rules on counter-charges and surety, penalties for false accusation, and the hierarchy of proof (documents, possession, witnesses; ordeals if absent). He closes with doctrines on prescription, title versus enjoyment, invalidation by fraud or force, mitigating conditions, theft restitution, and interest norms, placing the king as guarantor of order through disciplined procedure.