I look at three examples of early practices of the Supreme Court of India that highlight how little we know about the institutional history of the court 1) There was a regional bench of the court in Hyderabad, with ad-hoc judges to hear cases 2) There were many even-numbered sized panels of the court suggesting a norm of en banc hearing of important constitutional cases 3) There are examples of seriatim-judgement writing by the court, where all participating judgements gave seperate opinions.