A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c13.21

c13.21

the cases mentioned above, it will be noticed that the pleas in favour of the popular control over the king are put forward, except in the dictum of Āryadeva, along with the principles justifying the king’s authority. In the second place, the Hindu authors, again with the solitary exception of Āryadeva, fail to connect their principles and maxims with the idea of the popular will as the source of the king’s authority, such, e.g. as is involved in the Buddhist theory of contract. On the contrary the whole trend of their thought, as we have observed elsewhere,* is in favour of the view that the king derives his office and his authority from the will of the Supreme Being. We are therefore led to the conclusion that though there were germs of the idea of sovereignty of the people in the Hindu theory, these were never worked out into an independent and logically complete system.