the fourth and fifth centuries of the common era, judicial practices had become formal and rule-bound, and petitioners could appeal from the court of the guild or local community to that of the king.21 Here, each party had to present his own case in accordance with rules that can be traced to the Arthashastra tradition.22 These were obviously adversarial processes: as one of the later Hindu commentators says, ‘In a legal procedure one person wins and another loses.’
