State and Government in Ancient India c12.s4.2

c12.s4.2

In the *Ṛigveda*, one king alone Purukutsa has been only once described as *ardhadeva* or semi-divine (IV. 42. 8-9); and one solitary and late passage of the *Atharvaveda* (XX. 127. 7) describes king Parīkshit as a god among men (*Yo devo martyān adhi*). These passages, however, do not prove the acceptance of the divinity of the king by the age; Purukutsa was called semi-divine, probably because his widowed mother got him as a special favour of the gods Indra and Varuṇa. Parīkshit is called a god among men in a hymn which is out to panegyrise him; as no other king is ever so described in the Vedic literature, we may take it that the theory of the king's divinity was yet confined to the imagination of a few grateful courtiers. When a Samiti (popular assembly) could depose a king, the theory of the latter's divinity was not likely to take root in society.