War in Ancient India c5.s2.12

c5.s2.12

Let us now turn our attention to the laws governing righteous warfare. When a conqueror felt that he was in a position to invade the foreigner’s country, he sent an ambassador with the message: ‘Fight or submit.’⁶⁴ More than 5000 years ago India recognized that the person of the ambassador was inviolable. This was a great service that ancient Hinduism rendered to the cause of international law. It was the religious force that invested the person of the herald or ambassador with an inviolable sanctity in the ancient world; we find this principle operative at the dawn of Greek society.⁶⁵ Plato asserts that an injury done to the ambassador amounted to sacrilege against Zeus and Hermes. The same principle dominated the religious law of early Rome. Herodotus narrates the divine punishment that fell on Sparta in the fifth century B.C. for slaying the