A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c12.s2.24

c12.s2.24

Besides exhibiting the importance of the king's office from the point of view of the subjects, the author mentions in justification of monarchical authority a doctrine which is shared by him with at least one other writer,‡ namely that the king rules his subjects by virtue of his merit. Śukra is a great believer in the doctrine of karma, and expresses himself on this point with characteristic emphasis. "Karma alone," he writes in one place, "gives rise to good and bad conditions on this earth; the deeds done in a previous birth (prāktana) are themselves nothing but karma; who can even for an instant exist without karma?"§ In the following lines he explains that the division of society into five classes, namely the Brāhmaṇa, the Kṣatriya the Vaiśya, the Śūdra and the barbarian arises not from birth but from quality and merit (guṇakarmabhiḥ). In another place he declares that men are directed towards virtue and vice by desires assuming such forms as would help the fulfilment of the deeds done in the previous birth, and he concludes that it is most certainly in accordance with such deeds that everything happens.∗ Applying this basic concept of Hindu thought to the specific case of the king, Śukra writes, "The king acquires supernatural lustre (tejas) by means of his austerities (tapas), and he becomes the director, the protector as well as the source of delight; the king sustains the earth by means of his work done in his previous birth (prāktana) as well as by his austerities (tapas)"† According to this view, then, the king rules his subjects by his own merit—merit conceived as consisting mainly in the sum total of deeds done in the previous birth. The doctrine is repeated in another passage where the author, we think, boldly alters a text of the Manusaṁhitā to suit his own theory. He writes, "The king becomes the lord of (both) the movable and the immovable beings through his own austerities (tapas), taking (for that purpose) the eternal particles of Indra, of the Wind, of Yama, of the Sun, of Fire, of Varuṇa, of the Moon, and of the Lord of wealth (Kubera)."‡