This essay will explore the socio-political and semiotic functions ascribed to specific forms of punishment by the author of the Mānavadharmaśāstra, a classical Sanskrit text which contains the first articulated discourse on the need for shaming punishment and brutal executions in public places. I will argue that we need to view this specific form of novelty in Sanskrit normative discourse as related to, and justified by, an historical and political necessity for controlling and restraining certain practices and intellectual attitudes of “inferior classes” (avaravarṇa) and other specific social strata. Hence, with this work I want to show how this discourse on public punishment is guided by the author's clear political awareness about the need to establish a thorough moral discipline in order to achieve social stability.

Moving from such premises, I suggest taking Manu's doctrine of public punishment as a key element of a broader cultural struggle intended to institute, or preserve, a specific form of “proper social/ritual conduct” (sadācāra). A struggle meant to produce, through norms and law, a self-balanced social world that, as such, does not exist.

First of all, in order to become aware of the epistemic potential of such forms of social control, we need to briefly revisit the history of the Sanskrit discourse on punishment.

A short social and political history of the classical Sanskrit discourse on punishment

The genesis and the form of a theory of punishment ought necessarily to be conceived inside a socio-systemic dynamism made of social relations and political interests which influence the configuration and the developments of that very theory.