Hindu Administrative Institutions c6.s2.21

c6.s2.21

¹ Scholars are not quite agreed as to the interpretation of the term *arājaka*. Mr. Jayaswal thinks that the *arājaka* or non-ruled state was a living institution which had been tried as a constitutional experiment more than once in ancient times. The learned scholar places above others the Jaina *sūtras* as his authority in this particular. (*Āyāramgasuttam*, vol.ii, 3, 1-10, edited by Jacobi, Hindu Polity, pt. i. p. 99.) The Jaina *sūtra* cited gives six forms of state : ‘non-ruled’ (*arājaka*) states, *gaṇa-ruled*, *yuvarāja-ruled*, two-ruled, *vairājya*, and party-ruled state. Jayaswal goes the length of interpreting the term *arājaka* in the *Śānti Parvan*, chap. lviii, to which we have made pointed reference, as the state of law when people lived by mutual agreement or social contract. No doubt the *Śānti Parvan* speaks of a democratic form of Government in which law or *dharma* was the uncrowned ruler when people never dared to transgress its precepts; but whether this state is what the *Mahābhārata* calls as an *arājaka* state, one can hardly say with any confidence. There were in vogue in ancient india democratic and republican forms of constitution. They may have been of the nature of experiments, though not actually so intended. They failed apparently to meet the needs of the times. Hence the people obviously needed a powerful and a selfless authority to meet the situation with a firm hand. Consequently the people learned to prefer a monarch.