State and Government in Ancient India c9.3

c9.3

We have occasional speculations on the origin of the State in the *Mahābhārata*¹ and the *Digghanikāya*,² and though these works belong to different centuries and religions, their version shows a marked similarity. They both aver that for a long time after the creation of society, there prevailed a golden age of harmony and happiness, when people led happy and peaceful lives on account of their innate virtuous disposition, though there existed no government to see that the laws of nature were respected and followed. Popular imagination has dreamt of a golden age in the dim and distant past not only in the East but also in the West. Plato's Republic may well be regarded as the idealisation of such a Golden Age; the actual state could be only a faint copy of the ideal one delineated by him. As late as the 18th century, Rousseau held that the era of the Golden Age had disappeared many many centuries ago; the utmost that men could do today was to try to realise it to some extent in the present imperfect society¹