A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c12.s2.17

c12.s2.17

We may begin our analysis of political ideas in the Śukranīti by considering the author's treatment of the concept of seven factors of sovereignty. After giving the standard list of those factors he writes, "Among these the king is declared to be the head, the minister (is) the eye, the ally the ear, the treasury the mouth, the army the mind, while the fort and the territory are the two arms and legs."[^\dagger] In this striking passage is presented for the first time, so far as we are aware, in the history of Hindu political theory, a complete analogy between the factors of sovereignty and the organs of living beings. This, we think, is not sufficient to warrant the conception of organic unity of sovereignty, although it implies, without directly expressing the same, the notion of co-ordination of the factors thereof to a common end.