Hindu Administrative Institutions c7.s2.t2.50

c7.s2.t2.50

The character of ancient Indian monarchy was both hereditary and elective. It was elective in the sense that people acquiesced in the choice.¹ The principle of election worked not in conflict but in mutual harmony. We can call it a democratic monarchy because the *sabha*, the *viś*, and then the *samiti*, and then the *purohita* body decided the validity or otherwise of the succession to the monarchy. Even after election these exercised a check and influence over the conduct of the king. Each of these was a representative body of the whole people in the true sense of the term. It was democratic in the sense that the people had real control over the conduct of the king and even exercised rights of exclusion. The Atharva Veda hymn already quoted² refers undoubtedly to the re-entertainment of an exiled king. When the elected monarch had gone through the ceremony of consecration, the people felt it their duty to render unquestionable and full obedience to him. They paid him ungrudgingly the taxes that were due, and showed him the honours which one renders only to a deity. Therefore the theory of the divine right which James I of England claimed was not in India pushed to its extreme limits. People accepted divinity in a king only so far as he conducted himself properly and in a constitutional manner in the affairs of state. It was for the people to respect him because he possessed that divinity in him. It was not for the king, however, to abuse that right because it was accorded to him by general consent. There was thus an elasticity about the whole system. If the monarch proved to be absolute or despotic and therefore overruled the principle of protection, then the people entered an emphatic protest and asked him to redress their grievances. Failing this they rose in revolt and removed him.