In other portions of Arabia this same idea finds a different but similar expression. “With bare and shaven head the offender appears at the door of the injured person, holding a knife in each hand, and, reciting a formula provided for the purpose, strikes his head several times with the sharp blades. Then drawing his hands over his bloody scalp, he wipes them on the door-post. The other must then come out and cover the suppliant’s head with a shawl [covering the offense, in covering the offender], after which he kills a sheep, and they sit down together at a feast of reconciliation.”[159]
A record on a Babylonian clay tablet, of the twenty-eighth year of Nebuchadrezzar, affirms that “on the second day of the month of Ab” a certain “Imbiʿa shall bring his witness to the gate of the house of the chief Bel-iddin, and let him testify” as to a certain matter.[160] The gate of the chief man, or local magistrate, would here seem to have been the recognized court of justice.
In the palace ruins at Persepolis and Susa, the great doorways show, in their architecture, the influence of Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt. And in the relief sculpture of those doorways there is seen a representation of “the king sitting on his throne rendering justice at his palace gate.”[161]
At one of the gates of modern Cairo, the writer has seen a venerable Arab sitting in judgment on a case submitted to him by the contestants. And such a scene may be often witnessed at the gates of an Oriental city.
In accordance with this primitive idea, it became a custom in India for one who would obtain justice from another to seat himself at the door of a house, or a tent, and refuse to move from that position until he starved to death, unless his claim were heeded. If the suitor died at the door, or the household altar, the sin of his death rested upon the householder. The suitor’s blood cried out against the evil-doer.
Even to the present time appeals at the household altar are made in blood, in portions of India. A case recently before the British court in Kathiawar involved an illustration of such an appeal. One of the Charaus, a caste of heralds, had become responsible with his life, according to custom, for the repayment of a loan made to a land owner. The land owner delayed payment, and seemed disposed to avoid it. “The herald and his brother, with their old mother for a sacrifice, went to the door of the debtor’s house and demanded payment, as their family honor was at stake. When the land owner would not pay, the herald struck off the head of his mother with his sword before the door, the brother at the same time wounded (intending to kill) the debtor, and the two brothers sprinkled the mingled blood of the sacrifice on the householder’s door-posts. The land owner, smitten by public infamy and the guilt of the matricide, starved himself to death.”[162] References to this responsibility of the heralds are found in the Mahabharata.[163]