117 clerks remove the bandage from his hand, in front of the governor. If they see that it is burned, then he suffers the said punishments and in addition, they torture him until he confesses where he has hidden the stolen goods; what he did with them, and even if he does not confess, he is still punished. If his hand is healthy, they consider him acquitted and free and they kill his accuser or sentence him to afine or exile. This is also the way in which they punish someone who has killed another person, or a cow, or assaulted a Brahmin or a nair, or who touches a Brahmin’s wife; they make Mouros swear their oath by licking the scalding red blade of an axe. If it burns their tongue, then they take him to an open space and as I said, cut him down. And if the governor finds adolescents or young men who are layabouts and do not have an occupation, nor father; mother, nor a master with whom they live, he considers them lost, and he sells them as slaves to Mouros or whoever else will buy them for a very small sum of money, for four orfive ducats each, both men and women. Justice is handed down to nairs in this city in the following way: as they have so many privileges, as I will describe later, and cannot be put in chains regardless of what they do, if a nair kills another man, or steals or kills a cow, or sleeps with a loose woman, or eats or drinks in a lowely man’s house, or sleeps with a Brahmin’s wife, or openly speaks ill of the King, and there is complaint made to the Governor, he summons him, and if chooses not to come, he sends for three or four nairs, who are honest men and gives them an order with his signature to kill the said nair wherever they find him, because that is his will. They go off to search for the other nair and they kill him with spears or arrows wherever they find him, and there are cases in which if he has been warned, he manages to injure three or four before they kill him, and they kill him even if they find him in the city. After they kill him, they lay him on his back and place the order on his breast and leave him
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