A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.111

c10.111

categorically forbids him to act with guile.∗ Both the Manusaṁhitā and the Śāntiparvan, moreover, contain a code of the rules of war for the guidance of the Kṣattriyas, which is distinguished by its humane spirit.† Nevertheless the authors whom we are now considering sanction, in the interests of the king or of the State, some remarkable departure from the strict ethical standard. To illustrate this point we need not, we think, lay much stress on those passages which exalt fighting as an act of merit on the part of the king,‡ or those which justify the king's chastisement of his foes.§ More conclusive evidence is furnished by other passages to which we may at once turn our attention. In chapter C Yudhiṣṭhira on whom the lessons of righteous warfare have just been impressed by his master asks how the kings desirous of victory may lead their troops to battle even by slightly offending against the rules of morality. Bhīṣma says in the course of a lengthy reply that the king should learn both kinds of wisdom, namely, the straightforward and the tortuous. While the king, the teacher continues, should not follow the latter kind of wisdom, he should use it for removing the evil that overtakes him.|| In another place Bhīṣma, asked as to the line of conduct which a king should pursue when his friends are diminishing and foes are many, when his treasury is exhausted and he has no troops, when his ministers and assistants are wicked and his counsels are divulged, replies that the king should seize the wealth of all persons other than the ascetics and the Brāhmaṇas. Further on he declares that the oppression of the subjects for the purpose of raising the revenue is no sin and he states on the analogy of the felling down of trees for furnishing sacrificial stakes, that success is impossible without slaying those persons who stand in the way of enriching the treasury.[*] Finally we may mention a passage in chapter LXIX of the Śāntiparvan where Bhīṣma seems to preach for once that noxious cult of the poison and the dagger which, as we have seen in another place, was started into vogue by the Arthaśāstra. In this passage it is declared that the weak king may afflict the territory of his powerful enemy by means of weapons, fire, poison and stupefying articles.[†]