Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government c2.s1.130

c2.s1.130

³⁴ In the Buddhist story of the Bodhisatta Jotipāla ("Protector of the Light," D. II. 220 f.) the Purohitaship to which he succeeds is referred to as the *govindiya* (not in the *PTS Dictionary*), and the Purohita is the Mahā-Govinda. This epithet does not mean "high treasurer" as rendered by Malalasekara, for it was not the Purohita's function to act as treasurer: nor does it mean "High Steward" in the special and literal sense of "Lord of the Herds" as is suggested in *Dialogues* 2. 226. It much rather means "Shepherd of the Flock" or "Pastor" in that sense in which the Sun, Agni, or Bṛhaspati is the "Herdsman of the World" (*jagatas* or *bhuvanasya gopā*), and in that of John X. 14 "I am the good shepherd and know my sheep." The pastorate of a kingdom reflects the herding of the "unfaltering Herdsman" (*gopām*, RV. I. 164. 31, cf. JUB. III. 37. 1 and III. 29. 6), that of "the Herdsman of the world, the Knower, whose kine are never lost" (*vidvā́n ánaṣṭapaśur bhúvanasya gopā́ḥ*, RV. X. 17. 3, where *vidvā̃n gopā́ḥ* is just what *govit*, *govindu*, and *govinda* mean). That "his is a herdsman's tongue" (*gopājihvasya*, RV. III. 38. 9) is as much as to say that the flock knows his voice and follows him (as in John X. 4 and 27). We digress to remark that the notion of a divine shepherd may well be of high antiquity, going back to the earliest pastoral times. The notion of a divine pastor and of an analogous human pastorate is one of the very many formulae common to Platonic and Vedic philosophy, nor is there anything in either of
* All re-ductions of effects to causes are marital reunions. (III. 1. 138, Vārtt. 2), of *govit*, "one who knows, or finds kine" and to be correlated with *gaveṣ*, to "wish, or seek for kine": the word division is *go-vinda*, analogous to *go-pā*, *go-pati* and *paśu-pā*. Moreover, *go* and *paśu*, while literally "herd," "cattle," "flock," do not by any means always mean "animals" other than men, but often refer to "man" himself, the animal man, and are thus used as the equivalent of *prajā*, "children (of men)," as in AV. XIV. 2. 25 where the children of the bride are referred to as *paśāvaḥ*, in AA. II. 3. 2 where *paśavaḥ* denotes both animals in general and the animal man as distinguished from a "person," and in BU. I. 4. 10 where the man who has not realised "I am Brahma," and therefore approaches some God as "another than himself," is called a *paśu*, an "animal" fitted only to be regarded as food for the Gods.