A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.15

c6.15

In considering the above arguments in their application to the Indian conditions alone, it is well to remember at the outset that the thought of the Brahminical canonists is not co-extensive with the whole realm of Hindu culture. In the field which is treated by us in the present place we may notice at least three other phases of thought, the Buddhist, the Arthaśāstra and the Jaina, of which the first two are more or less independent of Brahminical influence. Now nothing is more characteristic of the Buddhist and the Arthaśāstra political thought than its bold and avowed appeal to human reason. The early schools and authors of the Arthaśāstra, in particular, introduced, as we have already observed, the conception of an independent branch of knowledge specifically concerned with the acquisition and the preservation of States, or in other words with the Art of Government, and not only did this science gather a rich literature around itself extending far down into the Middle Ages, but it found a place in the traditional lists of sciences. Furthermore, the ideas of the Arthaśāstra, as we shall see later on, were not confined within the four corners of an isolated system: they were absorbed and assimilated in the system of the Brahminical canon and were thence transmitted to other systems which drew their inspiration therefrom. Regarding the theory of the Brahminical canon it has to be admitted that human reason was not allowed such full scope as to bring into question the foundations of the system, such, *e,g,*, as the grand concept of the social order with its attendant list of duties (dharma) relating to the constituent classes thereof: the trend of thought, on the contrary, was to make use of the faculty of reason for the purpose of establishing the validity of those concepts. We may further grant that the Brahminical ideas of the State are conceived principally in the setting of the Whole Duty of the king, and are linked up in several instances, as in the doctrine of the king's creation, with the notions of theology. Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact that ‘rājadharma’ is treated in the canonical tradition of the Brāhmaṇas as independent of the Vedas at least in some of its parts, and it is held to be divisible from the point of view of its consequences into two classes corresponding to the king's political and his personal functions. This was expressed with great force by the most famous commentator of the Manusamhitā, the illustrious Medhātithi, who is supposed to have flourished at a date not later than the tenth century A. D.∗