A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c14.2

c14.2

In view of some recent attempts to establish points of analogy and contrast between the Hindu and certain Western theories of the king's origin, it seems desirable to consider the question with some fulness in the present place. Before doing this we think it necessary to mention a point that has, we hope, been sufficiently indicated above, namely that the Hindu theories do not admit of a clear-cut division into two distinct types, such as those of the divine and the human origin of the State, or of Social Contract and the divine creation of kingship.[*] Consider, for example, chapter LXVII of the Śāntiparvan which has been held[†] to represent the theory of social contract. In this case, as we have seen, Manu, the original king, is declared to have been first ordained by Brahmā and afterwards to have entered into a kind of contract with the people.[‡] In an earlier verse of the same chapter and in the same context it is categorically stated that the kings are created by the gods. On the other hand the story of the creation of kingship in chapter LIX of the Śāntiparvan and in the Manusamhitā—the first of which has been taken* to represent the divine creation of the king—combines, as we have observed before, the latter idea with the notion of a preliminary state of nature, and in the first-named instance that of a coronation-oath as well†.