A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c13.1

c13.1

We have now brought to a close our survey of the political thought of the Hindu people extending for a period of at least two thousand and five hundred years. We have seen how political speculation beginning in the Vedic Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas, mostly as an adjunct of dogmatic interpretation of the sacrificial ritual, entered upon a career of vigorous and independent growth in three more or less parallel branches of literature,—the Dharmasūtras, the Arthaśāstra, and the Buddhist canon,—of which the second underwent a virtual reconstruction at the hands of its great master Kauṭilya. The Rājadharma sections and chapters of the Mahābhārata, and to a much lesser extent those of the Manusaṁhitā, involve something like a synthesis of the Arthaśāstra material in harmony with the essential concepts of the older canon, while the interesting work of the Buddhist Āryadeva, fragmentary as it is, represents incidentally an independent speculative tradition. In Kāmandaka as well as in the minor Smṛitis and the Purāṇas, the tendency towards decline is already manifest, but an original departure is made by the great scholiasts who boldly attempt to rescue the political ideas of the Smṛitis from the danger of lapsing into theological dogmas. The Jaina works on polity and law, on the other hand, have little independent interest as they for the most part echo the thoughts of the older masters. Finally, amid the general decay of political speculation the Śukranīti makes itself conspicuous by its refreshing originality, while the mediaeval Digests and commentaries on the works of Sacred Law which come within our purview deal in a more conventional way with the concept of kingship.