A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.19.3

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.