State and Government in Ancient India c9.21

c9.21

Let us now take a review of the opinions of other writers on politics. Kauṭilya refers to the problem of the origin of the state only incidentally during a discussion of spies among themselves. One party there argues that government came into existence to counteract the law of the jungle that prevailed in society. People themselves selected Manu as their king and agreed to pay him the necessary taxes (I. 13). The work does not make any reference to any Golden Age existing in prehistoric times. Nārada (I. 1-2) and Bṛihaspati (I. 1-16) postulate the original existence of a Golden Age and point out that it soon came to an end and was succeeded by a social chaos. Government came into existence to put an end to it. They do not enter into any detailed discussion of the problem. Śukra has no useful observations to make about the origin of the state. He recognises a quasi-divinity in the case of a virtuous king; this may suggest that he was not much inclined to believe in the theory of Golden Age or social contract.