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The Mauryan Polity c6.s4.t3: Immediate ends of the State

The Mauryan Polity c6.s4.t3

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Immediate ends of the State

c6.s4.t3.1

Though there is a confusion here of an admixture of functions of government and functions of state as Burgess holds, still they are important since they clearly show the immediate ends of the state as realised in ancient Hindu polity. Attention has been already drawn to the Kauṭalīyan recommendation of the two aspects of government, power (*śakti*) and consummation (*siddhi*), and the different elements constituted by each. The *Arthaśāstra*, if it teaches anything, teaches the king to concentrate all his power so as to ensure the *lokayātrā* to his subjects and retain that power through an elaborate official machinery. The social organization with its principle of *svadharma* so much insisted in the *Arthaśāstra* is conceived to be the body politic composed of individuals in various states of evolution discharging their respective duties and yet enjoying freedom. This freedom of the individual is not of the type aimed at by the political philosophers of the 19th century. The individual of Hindu social polity aimed not at asserting his rights and privileges but aimed at the far more important thing, namely, the liberation of his soul by faithfully discharging his obligations and by means of supreme knowledge (*jñāna*). This opens to him the royal path which ultimately leads him to the *mokṣa*, the final release from the bondage of birth and death (*saṃsāra*). Not the least interesting is the fact that the chief proximate end of the state as proclaimed in the Kauṭalīya and vociferously reiterated in the Edicts of Aśoka, (which no political philosopher of modern times could ignore) is summed up in two pregnant lines:

c6.s4.t3.2

"In the happiness of the subjects lies the happiness of the king: it is no happiness or welfare to the king which is not the happiness or welfare of the people at large."¹

c6.s4.t3.3

¹ Bk. I, ch. 19; R. E. VI, First Separate Edict at Jaugada, and Pillar Edict VI.

c6.s4.t3.4

Towards this end Aśoka directed all his energy and effort. He protected the rights of individual associations in the land whether it be Brahmanical, Buddhist, Jaina, Ājīvaka or any other. He strove to promote brotherly feeling among these sects of various denominations and character. He allowed them to have their own ways of religious worship and philosophical speculation. He aided these associations in their functioning and in their accomplishment. He promulgated regulations and ordinances to prevent a breach of the peace among these sects. Aśoka felt these to be the primary duties of the state and executed them to the best of his abilities. Why these things were zealously pursued is explained by him and by the author of the *Arthaśāstra*. These are towards realising the ultimate end, which, according to the belief of the times, was to find an honoured place in Heaven.

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