A Chinese Oath
John Gurner, a grandson of Edward Curr, commenced practising law in Melbourne in 1877. By the time he became crown prosecutor in 1889 he had already seen a great deal of colonial life. Gurner wrote his ‘reminiscences’ in old age, but his recall of legal practice in a multicultural Melbourne while still a student is fabulous.
One of the cases tried was a charge of arson, a Chinaman being the defendant. This involved the examination of a number of Chinese witnesses, who were sworn, I remember, some by the breaking of a saucer, and one by the chopping off of a cock’s head, due precautions having first been taken. In later days, the accepted method of swearing Chinese witnesses in Australia was the blowing out of a match. As translated for me by the official Chinese interpreter, Mr Hodges, who, I believe, was a Chinese mandarin, the oath was: ‘You have come here into Court before the Judge to speak the truth. If you speak the truth, God and the whole body of discerning spirits will help and protect you; but if you speak false, they will punish you, probably by annihilation as by the extinguishing of this fire. Blow out the match!’ But there was a story told of a civilised Chinaman, possibly of agnostic tendencies, who, being asked in what manner he chose to be sworn, answered: ‘Me swear alle same anyway; clack ’im saucer, chop head off cock, blow out match, smell book—me no care.’
Beyond question, whatever the form of oath, perjury is rampant in all countries and in all courts of justice. Lord Darling once said: ‘It is supposed that the Book is covered with microbes and that people get ill through kissing it. My experience is that a great many people commit perjury and get punished in no other way.’
Of course, Asiatics present a two-fold problem, the first of which is to devise a sufficiently practical and binding form of oath. In Victoria it is customary to swear a Hindu holding a glass of water in his hand. He is satisfied—why? It represents water from the sacred River Ganges. But why not on the same principle swear a Christian witness upon a copy of Robinson Crusoe? Surely the principles which allow a glass of water from the local town supply to pass muster as water from the Ganges, would allow Robinson Crusoe to masquerade as the Bible.
A Eurasian interpreter who acted for many years in Victoria assured me that the only form really binding on the Hindu is to get a calf into court, and cause the witness, whilst repeating the oath, to pass his hand down the calf’s back, head to tail. The introduction of a frightened calf into court would inevitably be followed by unpleasant consequences, and it is to be remembered (Sir James Stephen, I think, points it out) that if a Hindu, having been sworn to tell the truth, inadvertently says something which may not be true, he is, in his belief, as hopelessly damned as if he had lied wilfully. And that therefore, however firmly he may be bound by his oath, still, recognising that a slip into inaccuracy is almost inevitable, he, whether from the weakness of human nature or lifelong habit, lies as freely as if not speaking under the sanction of the most binding form of oath.