A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c13.17

c13.17

The above represents one aspect of the Hindu view of the king's position in relation to his subjects. The other aspect which links up the Hindu theory with the view of the mediaeval Church and differentiates it from the theory of Divine Right, is concerned with the safeguards against the abuses of the king's power. Kingship, to begin with, is most often conceived in Hindu thought as an office and not as a lordship. We may prove this by pointing to the arguments noted above, namely, that the king is held in the Brahminical canon to be subject to the paramount law of his order imposing upon him, above all, the duty of protection, that the maxim making the king's taxes his fee for protection runs almost through the whole of Hindu thought, that even the exponents of the doctrine of divine creation contemplate protection to be the specific object of the institution of kingship, and lastly, that the Śāntiparvan explicitly permits the subjects to abandon the king lacking in this essential qualification for his post. Besides thus insisting upon the duties of the king the Hindu authors sometimes, as we have seen, declare justice or righteousness to be the essential principle of kingship,—a view which naturally leads to the differentiation of the good king and the tyrant.