State and Government in Ancient India c9.11

c9.11

entered into a mutual contract that persons guilty of unsocial acts like misappropriation and adultery would be expelled from society. We are expressly told that in order to inspire mutual confidence, they entered into a universal social contract to guarantee the agreement. We are however told that people still continued to be unhappy, probably because there was no king or government to enforce the contract. They then approached the Creator with a request to appoint a king, who on the one hand, should be worth the reverence of the community and on the other, should be able to protect the people. The Creator straightway appointed Manu as the king.¹ To rule over a refractory populace was however distasteful to him and he did not like to undertake the job. Here the epic does not refer to the Creator solving the difficulty by composing a law code ; continuing the atmosphere of the theory of Social Contract it states that people themselves assured Manu that law would be followed and the sin would go the law-breakers and not to the king for punishing them. They further agreed to pay the necessary taxes.²