“If you don’t speak according to the truth...”
From its foundation, the Melbourne Supreme Court adopted the British common law principles of religious relativity. This meant that witnesses were sworn in on an Oath deemed culturally appropriate.
Originally, the colonial Australian courts borrowed judicial practices from the Straits Settlement and Hong Kong. However, from the 1850s the forms of the Chinese Oath in Victoria took a markedly different trajectory. Whereas by 1864 the Shanghai Mixed Court had ‘fully adopted Western legal procedures’ and did not allow the use of the Chinese Oath, Victorian courts continued to use the Chinese Oath into the twentieth century.
In 1895, an Argus journalist described this often ridiculed oath ceremony as entailing: ‘an ordinary wax match, lighted … and then blown out to the accompaniment of a lot of hong-kong-ching-long.’
This representation bore little resemblance to the words of the oath, which a Chinese interpreter in Bendigo phonetically transcribed as:
Nee jew chung kong, in ho
You according to truth speak, don’t
Kong tai wa, ku ku chun
Talk falsehood, everyword true
Nee ni jew chun kong
If you don’t’ according to the truth speak
Sheng-ai jak nee
God punish you.
In the 1890s, trusted court interpreters such as Henry Ah Poo, Henry Lee Young and Charles Hodges regularly administered the so-called ‘Chinese Oath’.
Hindu and Muslim witnesses were similarly sworn in according to an oath ceremony. Muslims were sworn on the Koran, and Hindus by drinking a cup full of the symbolic water of the Ganges.
These legal practices of religious relativity continued into the twentieth century, when they apparently began to fall out of use, though non-Christians at times asserted their right to be sworn according to their religion. In 1926, Melbourne court officials were ‘staggered’ when a ‘Hindoo witness desired to be sworn in on the water of the Ganges, but had to be content with drinking a glass of water instead’.
Today the Melbourne Supreme Court has a secular oath, but its law and ceremonies continue to privilege the Anglo-Christian tradition.
See 'Oaths and Affirmations', Court Services, Victoria.
https://www.courts.vic.gov.au/court-system/appearing-court/oaths-and-affirmations