A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.61

c10.61

† We may consider in the present place certain current estimates of the Hindu doctrine of the king's divinity. Prof. Pramatha Nath Banerjea (op. cit. p. 71 and foot-note) holds on the authority of certain texts of the Śukranīti (I 30-34 ; Ibid 87) that in ancient India "only a righteous king was regarded as divine," and "the king was not a devatā but a nara-devatā." Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar (op. cit. p 130) virtually endorses the former statement and quotes one of Dr. Banerjea's texts (Śukra I 70) to prove that according to the Hindu theory "a king is a naradeva only so long as he is virtuous and he ceases to be so the moment he goes to the bad." Now however important Śukra's qualification of the older doctrine of the king's divinity might be, it is difficult to understand the grounds on which his view is held to represent as above the Hindu theory on the point in question. For Śukra's theory, so far as we are aware, is peculiar to him and is not shared by the other Hindu authors. As for the contention that the king was not a '*devatā*' but a '*nara-devatā*', it is pointedly disproved by one of the concluding verses of chapter LIX of the Śāntiparvan which categorically states that the kings and the gods ever since Pṛthu's time have been declared by the sages to be equal (tato jagati rājendra satatam śabditam budhaiḥ devāścha naradevāścha tubyā iti viśāmpate). [^asterisk]: * VII 8; 13, S. B. E. Vol. XXV pp. 217-218.