Hindu Administrative Institutions c5.11

c5.11

In regard to the emergence of the state, the remarks of a recent writer seem apt. ‘The foregoing sketch may help us to understand the slow beginnings of the state and to justify our contention that the state is a structure not coeval and coextensive with society, but built within it, as a determined order for the attainment of specific ends. The earliest forms of state are extremely narrow in their aims and powers. They scarcely touch the inner purposes of the community which are in the far safer wardship of custom.’¹ While the Hindu notions of the state seem to agree with the above, the state according to them, does not emerge till after a considerable degree of travail in the life of society as a whole, but comes into existence almost in the same manner as elsewhere. It is therefore necessary first of all to determine what exactly was the order that was introduced, how, and for what practical ends. As far as the sources for Hindu Political Institutions go, they seem to agree in this, that society has had a comparatively long period of existence and made an attempt to pursue particular ends of corporate life, and at a certain stage of the existence of society in this manner, the discovery was made that the natural tendency of group life showed itself in the practical assertion of the principle, might is right. Finding that such an unstable position did not conduce to the well-being of society as a whole, society made an effort to devise some kind of machinery to preserve order, and permit of progress of the separate groups, constituting society, prosecuting each its own particular ends. Thus emerged the state of the Hindus, according to such evidence as we have for the origin of the state.