A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.19

Language: English

c6.19.1

We have, lastly, to examine the influence exercised upon Hindu political thought by certain specific types of polity to which the conditions in Northern India gave a peculiar prominence. Though republican constitutions figured, as we have said, upon the stage of Indian history, it was the monarchic State that dominated the scene. In the paucity of other data the most complete account of the Indian monarchies is to be derived from the literature of the sacred canon and the secular Arthaśāstra which reflects, as we have seen, actual and not ideal conditions of political existence. It is not our intention in the present place to mention all the distinctive features of the standard Indian polity, but to specify those characteristics alone that stamped themselves upon the system of Hindu thought. The monarchic States, to begin with, ranged in size from governments of small extent to large empires stretching, in the hyperbolical language of the conventional description, to the boundary of the whole earth as far as the sea. It was however an index of the strong disruptive forces constantly at work that the small States comprised in the traditional States-system (maṇḍala) preponderated over the empires. Further, the monarchic governments usually involved a central administrative machinery superimposed upon the subordinate administrations of the district, the town, and the village.

c6.19.2

The other features of the Indian State were concerned with the position of the priestly and the ruling classes as well as of the king with reference to the rest. The Brāhmaṇas indeed occupy from the first a very important place in the society and the State. In the Brahmanical canon not only are the person and property of the priestly order protected by the severest penalties but they are armed with a formidable array of immunities which includes the exemption from taxation as well as from capital punishment ∗. To the same favoured order is assigned in the later works the right of filling the panel of judges in the royal court of justice in a partial measure as well as the highest seat in the council of ministers. Above all the Brāhmaṇa has the God-given right of spritual teaching and of guardianship of the Sacred Law which embraces every section of the community together with every act of their lives. The King's Chaplain (purohita), in particular, has not only the task of ministering to the spiritual needs of his master, but he also stands in the front rank of State officials, for to him belongs the function of warding off by means of his charms and spells the dangers threatening the safety of the king and the kingdom. It is remarkable that much of these ideas of the Brāhmaṇa's social and civic status is implicitly accepted in the systems lying outside the Brahmanical canon.

c6.19.3

But however high the pretensions of the Brāhmaṇa might be carried, the essential incompatibility of his functions with those of the ruling and the fighting Kṣatriya was seldom, if ever, lost sight of. The Arthaśāstra works, which are in essence practical manuals of statecraft, merely emphasise this divergence by their significant exclusion of the purohita from the list of component factors (aṅgas) of government (rājyam). Thus the Brāhmaṇas did not monopolise the position of vantage with respect to the other classes, but they shared this privilege with the Kṣatriya. Turning to another point, we have to observe that the king who was the Kṣatriya par excellence was not held to be an irresponsible despot. In the system of the Brahmanical canon which forms the groundwork of the whole, the king was indeed entrusted with the highest executive functions. But the concept of the Sacred Law (dharma) which claimed to bind every section of the community involved a complete separation of these functions from the function of interpreting the Law which was reserved for the Brāhmaṇas.

c6.19.4

Further the rules of the Law which derived their origin from Divine Revelation embodied in the Vedas imposed upon the king a bundle of duties whose observance was enforced by the highest moral and spiritual sanctions.∗ Among these duties was reckoned that of respecting the traditional rights of the individuals as well as of collective groups,—rights which were indeed invested with an imperishable authority by their inclusion in the Sacred Canon. The Brāhmaṇa canonists, for instance, lay down with scrupulous care the heads of the government revenue as well as the proportion payable under each head, and they mention classes of people that are altogether to be exempted from taxation. Further, the canonical writers require the king to respect the customs of diverse communal units and even to give legal effect to the rules passed by such bodies.†