Hindu Administrative Institutions c6.44

c6.44

neither a treatise on ethics nor even on polity, but a synthetic science of society. Its end is social well-being, and this is realized by protection, justice and peace. As a matter of fact these were the functions of ancient Indian states, which were merely the channel of the communal will. To Sukra, *Nītiśāstra* is the very food of the social organism, its precepts supplying blood to, and helping to form the flesh of, human society. Like food supplying the primal wants of physical life, it ministers to the fundamental interest of social existence.¹ In verse 15 again Śukra compares a *nīti*-less state to a leaky vessel. It is dangerous in the sense that it increases the number of enemies and saps the quality of efficiency in the state. Hence the infinite importance of *nīti* to a state. It is said that a king who acts up to the precepts of the *nīti* literature is applauded, whilst a king who acts according to his own will is condemned.² Here, one can notice the subordination of the individual, though he be a king, to the teachings of *Nītiśāstra* or *Rāja Dharma*. It is for him to promote the good and happiness of the state as well as of himself by adhering closely to the precepts of the science of *nīti*.³ B. K. Sarkar remarks, ‘In Kāmandaka and specially in Śukra, we have accordingly not only the pedagogies of Plato, e.g. his “*Statesman*”, but also his ethics, the monograph on justice, viz., the *Republic*, as well as his treatise on political administration, the *Laws*, if, indeed, all the three are not to be regarded as equally pedagogical.’⁴