State and Government in Ancient India c12.s4.16

c12.s4.16

In Europe the doctrine of the divinity of the king was first advanced when Alexander the Great was deified in his life time in *c.* 324 B. C. Roman emperors were deified after their death and temples were built in their honour. Christianity conceded real divinity to the Pope and it was believed that he could transfer it to the king at the time of his coronation. The Reformation movement, which attacked the powers and privileges of the Pope, indirectly gave a fill-up to the divinity of the monarch. Later on the conflict between the Pope and the king came to an end and the kings started to utilise the theory of their divinity in their struggle against the people. In this connection four propositions were advanced, (1) that the monarchy is a divinely ordained institution ; (2) that the hereditary right is indefeasible; (3) that kings are accountable to God alone; (4) that non-resistance and passive obedience are enjoined by God. King’s divinity began to be advocated in defence of royal tyranny. In ancient India, Nārada is the solitary writer who at one place went to the extent of maintaining that the person of even a wicked king was inviolable because of his divinity.¹ His view, however, was not generally accepted. The wicked king Veṇa claimed exemption from punishment on the ground of his divinity, but angry sages killed him immediately after he had advanced this impious plea. It is further necessary to emphasise that only good and pious kings were regarded as divine by ancient Hindus ; bad and impious ones were dubbed as demoniac.² The view of Gregory the Great that even bad kings are divine and responsible to God alone was clearly not acceptable to most of the ancient Indian thinkers. Even Manu, who advocates the divinity of the king in the extreme form, warns him that he will suffer and meet with punishment in this very life if he misbehaves and misgoverns. He further points out that the divinity of the king does not confer infallibility on him. As a matter of fact, says Manu (VII. 45), he is more liable to err and fall than ordinary men, as he is exposed to greater temptations; he should, therefore, take greater precautions to see that he does not become a prey to different vices and calamities that arise out of *kāma* (passion) *krodha* (anger) and *lobha* (greed). A few kings misled by the surrounding flatterers, it seems, claimed infallibility on account of their so-called divinity; how they became buts of public ridicule has been well described by Bāṇa,¹ the biographer of king Harsha.