Hindu Administrative Institutions c5.13

c5.13

What was it that people living in a society wished to pursue, in what manner did they actually suffer in the pursuit of their ends, and what exactly was the form of the institution that they provided themselves for preventing this? To answer these questions, it would be necessary to know what was the ultimate ideal of society among the Hindus and what they regarded as the ultimate aim of that society. Societies existed with a view to subserve the ends that men in society sought when they reached a certain degree of culture, namely, their well-being here, and similar well-being hereafter when they came to recognize a hereafter. As far as our sources containing political discussions go, we do not reach to a state of Hindu society when they had not yet developed a state of hereafter, towards which they had to shape their life, and that hereafter was attainable by the several groups, perhaps in several ways, for which orderly pursuit of their fixed aims, they required the protection of a settled administration. They therefore postulated their Dharma; and the pursuit of Dharma is necessarily life in this world with a view to the attainment of the ultimate aim of all Dharma, the life in the next. Hence they divided the main objects of existence of man as four, Dharma, Artha, Kāma and Moksha; and in treating of politics and economics, they naturally took into consideration the first three alone, as having to do with life here, leaving the fourth, the life hereafter, to follow as a matter of course according to the character of the life here. Hence came in the category, Trivarga, as opposed to the four Purushārthas. Trivarga is the first three items enumerated above of the four. Moksha is the ultimate Purushārtha and therefore deos not directly come within the purview of any Government.