A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.134

c10.134

Such is the famous and oft-quoted extract embodying the canonist’s view of the conditions ensuring the success of republican communities. If we have to look for a precedent, we may perhaps find one in two passages of the Buddhist canon which, as we have seen in another place, give identical lists of seven conditions of welfare with reference to the Vajji—Lichchhavi confederacy.† A comparison of these passages, with the present one reveals, we think, the superiority of the later thought in form as well as in matter. For while the Buddhist author addresses himself to the case of a particular republican community and gives but a bare list of its essential qualifications, the Brahminical writer analyses the qualifications of republics in general, and brings out in course of this analysis some of their outstanding characteristics. From the nature of the qualifications insisted on in the foregoing passages it further appears that while in the earlier analysis the moralist preponderates over the political thinker, the case is just the reverse in the latter instance.∗