A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.136

c10.136

∗ Prof. Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (op. cit. p. 107) thinks, in view of the changed attitude of the author towards the republics as compared with Kauṭilya, that the above passage from the Mahābhārata ‘ushered in a new epoch of political thought which was a reaction against that represented by the school of Kauṭilya’. We are not quite sure whether this claim can be sustained. For much as we agree with Dr. Majumdar in his emphasis of the different angle of vision from which the non-monarchical communities are studied by Kauṭilya and the author of the Mahābhārata, we fail to find in the former anything resembling a theory of republics,—Kauṭilya’s treatise as we have said elsewhere, is essentially a work on the art of government and not on the theory of the State. Nor must it be forgotten that the reflections in the Mahābhārata extract above quoted, however acute they might be, roused not a single echo in the later systems of thought, while the speculations of the canonical author relating to the monarchic State were eagerly drawn upon by the subsequent writers. In these circumstances we may perhaps correctly describe the position held by the theory of the gaṇas in the Sāntiparvan in relation to the historical development of Hindu thought by saying that it involved the consideration, after a long interval and with an intensified insight, of the problem of republican communities.