Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s6.1

c11.s6.1

In an epoch of great monarchies, it was natural to exalt the power of the monarch. According to the general theory of Hindu Polity, the king was only the guardian of the law, not its maker ; laws depended for their validity on their intrinsic conformity to the standard of equity (*dharma*) and on the sanction of social usage ; and every decree of the king had to conform to both these sources of legal right.² With Kauṭilya, on the other hand, the royal decree has an independent validity of its own ; moreover, its validity is of so overriding a character that it must be taken to prevail against equity, private treaty or contract, and social usage.³ This view of the supremacy of the royal decree is exceptional among Indian writers ; it comes in first with Kauṭilya, and is traced only in Nārada among subsequent texts. Kauṭilya also exalts reason (*nyāya*) above the prescription of texts (*śāstra*) in cases of conflict between the two, and boldly justifies the course on the plea that texts become corrupt with lapse of time. These statements placed by Kauṭilya at the head of the section on the administration of justice