[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D.](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.ghoshal-1923) › c10.55 # A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.55 A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.55 - **Language:** English ### [c10.55](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.ghoshal-1923.c10.55) In examining the theories of the king's origin as above described, we have found involved in them the notion of the king's divine nature. This point deserves to be treated in some detail. The teachers of the Arthaśāstra including even Kauṭilya imputed, as we have seen in another place, a kind of divinity to the king by metaphorically assimilating his functions to those of various specified deities. This view is not unknown to the authors whom we are now considering. Manu, for example, enjoins the king in one place to imitate the energetic action of eight specific deities, and he seizes the occasion to show how the king's acts resemble severally the functions of those deities.n∗ Similarly Bhīṣma, in chapter LXVIII of the Śāntiparvan, asked as to why the king is called a god, quotes the long address of the sage Brihaspati in which, as we have observed before, the king is said to assume the forms of five deities according to the varying nature of his functions.n† Yet the most characteristic pronouncement of the canonical authors of this period on the present point, and that which in their system bears directly upon the question of the mutual relations of the king and his subjects, is centred in the doctrine of the king's divine personality—a doctrine which, we can not help thinking, was deliberately introduced by these authors with the object of strengthening the principle of authority. In Manu's theory of the king's origin, it will be observed, the king is stated to have been created out of the particles of eight guardians of the world. The consequence of this act in investing the king with superhuman majesty is described in the immediately following lines. "Because a king has been formed of particles of those lords of the gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in lustre; and, like the sun, he burns eyes and hearts; nor can anybody on earth even gaze on him. Through his (supernatural) power he is Fire and Wind, he Sun and Moon, he the Lord of justice (Yama), he Kubera, he Varuṇa, he great Indra."cont∗ While Manu conceives the king to be formed out of eight guardians of the world, the author of the Śāntiparvan declares him, by way of justifying his authority, to have absorbed the essence of the god Viṣṇu,—a view which recalls the idea conveyed in a text of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa.cont† In the passage bearing on this point, Bhīṣma, after answering Yudhiṣṭhira's first question regarding the origin of kingship, proceeds, as it seems to us, to answer the second query of the king, namely why the people submit to one man who is their equal in all respects. The Lord Viṣṇu, he says, entered the person of king Pṛthu, and hence the world bows down to one man as to a god. What reason is there, he asks, for the people's submission to one man except his divine quality (daivādṛite guṇāt)? A god, he continues, whose stock of spiritual merit is exhausted comes down upon earth from heaven, and is born as a king versed in the science of polity and as a man endowed with Viṣṇu's majesty. As he is established by the gods, no one transcends him and everybody submits to him. This capacity of ruling the earth does not accrue to him by his own merit. Meritorious acts lead to meritorious results, and hence mankind obeys the voice of one man who is equal to it.∗ In this case, it will be observed, the author categorically denies the king's authority to arise from his intrinsic qualities. He derives it on the contrary from the king's divine origin and nature, on the hypothesis of the king's creation by the god Viṣṇu and his incorporation of the god's essence.† - [Previous: c10.54](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.ghoshal-1923.c10.54) - [Next: c10.56](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.ghoshal-1923.c10.56) - [Up: c10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.ghoshal-1923.c10) ## Linked texts (4) - [Mānava Dharmaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.dharma.manu.7.5) — Manu & Bhṛgu, Sanskrit - [Mahābhārata](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.mahabharata.vyasa.12.68) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.artha.kautilya) — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit - [Śatapathabrāhmaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.brahmana.satapatha) — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.ghoshal-1923.c10.55](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.ghoshal-1923.c10.55) · Pramāṇa