A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.104

c10.104

Another branch of statecraft that is treated in these works and forms, as before, a distinct group by itself, is concerned with the rule of punishment (daṇḍa). Here, as in other cases, the canonical authors would seem to clothe in a poetical and romantic garb the ideas of the Arthaśāstra. Thus Manu for the purpose of stressing the importance of punishment as the grand security of public order, personifies the abstract principle and invests it with the highest attributes of sanctity and power. "For the (king's) sake," he says, "the Lord formerly created his own son, Punishment, the protector of all creatures, (an incarnation of) the law, formed of Brahman's glory." And again, "Punishment is (in reality) the king (and) the male, that the manager of affairs, that the ruler, and that is called the surety for the four orders' obedience to the law."[^ *] This is followed by a verse of a similar import which, as we now know, was borrowed by Manu from an older text.[^ †] In another place Manu justifies the infliction of punishment, in the fashion of some of the Arthaśāstra teachers, by pointing to the inherent evil of cosmic nature. He writes, "The whole world is kept in order by punishment, for a guiltless man is hard to find ; through fear of punishment the whole world yields the enjoyments (which it owes.)"[^ ‡]