Hindu Administrative Institutions c10.s1.5

c10.s1.5

Law then gained supreme authority in the land and the ancient Hindu monarch felt obliged to accept it without any reservation. He was not above the law but under it. If he swerved from the accepted law of the land he was liable to punishment like any other citizen of the state.³ The *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* says⁴ the law is ‘the king of kings’. This dominating position of the law of the Hindus is due to the fact that the ancients conceived that law was not a man-made thing but a divinely declared one. The codes of law or the *Dharmaśāstras* were not only legal but also religious. In matters, secular and sacred, the law depended alike for sanction upon religion and the acceptance of the *śiṣṭas* in the state. For the laws were intended for man to realize the four *puruṣārthas* of each individual—*dharma, artha, kāma* and *mokṣa*. The sources of law increased in number when the various early tribes gradually evolved into an organized society. Hence the law-giver Gautama includes the *Dharma-*