A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.16

c10.16

Besides involving the fusion of the king's public and his domestic functions, the synthesis of the secular and canonical material in the works we are now considering tended, we think, to bring about a close approximation of the concepts of rājadharma and daṇḍanīti, which, as we have seen in another place, were at first associated respectively with the literature of the Dharmasūtras and of the Arthaśāstra. Rājadharma, to begin with, as conceived by the canonical authors of this period consists, in an overwhelming measure, of the rules of internal administration and external policy. Thus its scope is virtually co-extensive with that of daṇḍanīti, involving in either case the conception of an Art of Government. Furthermore it appears that the canonical writers magnified the antiquity and sanctity of daṇḍanīti with the result that the concept of this science was brought into line with that of rājadharma. Manu, for example, applies to itstar the epithet eternal (śāśvatī) which is usually applied to the holy Vedas alone, while Bhīṣma in chapter LIX of the Śāntiparvan declares it to have been created by the god Brahmā along with the institution of kingship by Viṣṇu.dagger