Justice was the ideal of ancient India and for this purpose the hour of judgment was introduced Kautilya in his Arthashastra states, "Upasthana-gitaan karyarthinam a-dvarasanganga karyate Durdarsho hi raja karyakarya-viparyasam ajnaya: karyate Then prakriti-kopam ariparavamsa or gacchate " That is, the king sitting in the assembly would not make the justice-seeking persons wait at the door.

If the king is difficult to be seen by the subjects and the burden of the affairs of the king is on the attendant staff, there is no order in the work of justice This makes the king disaffected with the subjects and he has to be subjugated to the enemy.

This was the royal ideal of ancient India And to uphold this ideal, the bell of justice was used The Sinhala Buddhist legend "Mahavamsa," compiled in Pali in the sixth century CE, mentions that the king of Edara, a native of Tiruchirappalli in the Chola country, present-day Thanjavur, had a bell of judgement.

The king was of Tamil origin He held the throne of Sinhala from approximately 145 BCE to 101 BCE He was a just man It is said that a bell was tied to his bed-sheath and had a long rope outside the palace Anyone could ring the bell and ask for justice in the royal court.

This proves that the use of the bell was prevalent in South India and Ceylon before the Buddhist text Mahavamsa was composed in the sixth century CE The Kashmiri scholar Kalhana, writing in his Rajatarangini in the mid-12th century CE, mentions the king of Kashmir Harsha (1089-1101 AD) as saying, "The bell of the lion gate is called Mahaghanta.

That is, the bell was hung on the lion's gate all around King Harsha's palace The bell was rung by the justice-seeking subjects to inform the king As the rain clouds quenched the thirst of the thirsty people, King Harsha immediately appeased them by listening to the prayers of the subjects.

The custom of ringing the bell was also introduced outside India under Indian influence This type of ringing was used in Shyamadesh and Brahmades, both belonging to Hindu China The king of Shyamadesh was Ramraj or Ram Khamhaeng of Sukhodaya dynasty, in the late 13th and early 14th centuries CE.

He is said to have rung such a bell On the other hand, the famous king of Brahmades was Onkpetlun (AD 1) of Tungoo dynasty He also introduced the ringing bell in his royal court in Pegunagar, the capital.

The instructions were written in Brahmo and Tailang languages so that any suitor could inform the king by ringing this large bell India and Burma had close relations and this was a result of his influence The custom of ringing the bell was later followed by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1605-1627 AD).

Jahangir's autobiography, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, mentions that sixty bells were tied to a thirty-yard-long pure gold chain One side of the chain was fastened to the wall of the Agra Fort and the other end to a stone pillar on the banks of the Yamuna.

In addition, the book Siyar-ul-Mutakshari by Ghulam Husain suggests that Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah (1719-1748) introduced the Judgment Bell in 1721, modelled after Jahangir If an oppressed person was prevented from entering the fort, he could pull the shackles and ring the bell to inform the emperor The emperor would then summon the justice seeker and settle his dispute.

Many say that the practice of justice bells was introduced in India during the Muslim period, but justice bells were in vogue for justice in India long before Muslim rule Thus, it is possible that the practice of justice bells was contributed by ancient Indian kings, as evidenced at the beginning of this writing.

References: 1) "The Chain of Justice," Indian Culture, Calcutta, Vol VII, 1940, PP-1-2 by H C Roychowdury 2) Studies in the Political and Administrative Systems in Ancient and Medieval India, 1974, PP- 41-44 by D C Sircar.