Hindu Administrative Institutions c6.s1.19

c6.s1.19

It is worthy of remark that these ideas of election and contract are quite in keeping with the Buddhistic theory of the origin of kingship. In the *Digha Nikāya* mention is made of the concept of the state of nature when kingship was instituted on the basis of contract.¹ The king is known as a Mahāsammata and a Khattiya. The state of nature represents here a stage of pre-political society in which the institutions of family and property are recognized though the enjoyments thereof are uncertain. It was a social state in which there was no fixed standard, nor a political authority which could prevent the violation of the rights pertaining to property and family. Towards this end a Mahāsammata was appointed whose duty it was to enforce the already existing rights and thus be a ‘protector of the fields’. ² It would then appear that both the Brahmanic and Buddhist texts agree as to the existence of the social state in the first instance, and the election of a king on the basis of contract in the second. To use modern political phraseology, the agreement with Pṛthu was a sort of political or social contract which is reckoned as the origin of civil society. That which Kauṭalya refers to is possibly a governmental contract as it deals with certain definite agreements between the ruler and the ruled. It may also be noted in passing that this contractual theory of a governmental compact was not a figment of Kauṭalya’s imagination, but a theory already existing. This is evident from the Kauṭalīya itself.³