A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.2

c6.2

It thus appears that the factors that helped to give rise to the political theories of the Hindus must have been embedded in the peculiar conditions of the land and character of its people. The most general factor that fostered these theories appears to have been the variety and multiplicity of the States that crowded the stage of Indian history in ancient times. India, as has been well said, is the type of endless diversity strangely yoked with an underlying unity. In the political sphere the unifying idea has struggled unceasingly with the deeply rooted tendency towards disruption, and hence empires of greater or smaller extent and duration have alternated with a bewildering maze of petty States. But the Indian States were not, contrary to the usual view, modelled after a uniform pattern, that of despotic monarchy. The political history of India reveals at frequent intervals from the earliest period down at least to the fifth century A. D. a number of republican constitutions existing side by side with the familiar monarchic governments. It is evident that these conditions offered an exceptionally wide and rich field for the investigation of the concrete facts of political life and the formulation of general principles regarding their nature. Further, the intense strain and tension in which, in the absence of an effective international law guaranteeing the safety of the weaker States against the stronger, the lives of most Indian governments were passed, had the result of making the Art of Government (Arthaśāstra) a subject of burning interest. The same cause appears to have given rise to a remarkable notion underlying all the rules of the Arthaśāstra and much of the rules of the Brāhmaṇical canon, namely that the State, while subject like all human institutions to the influence of chance, was essentially a work of art requiring the exercise of the highest qualities of mind and body for its successful direction. The last influence that seems to have stimulated the political speculations of the Hindus was sectarian rivalry. It is true that in the long run the political ideas of the people transcended the differences of sect and assumed a more or less stereotyped character. Thus the theories of the State that are embodied in the Jaina legal and political treatises are in substance the replicas of the corresponding ideas of the Brāhmaṇas. In the early phase of its growth, however, Hindu political thought found in the divergence of sects a powerful stimulus. Thus the challenge thrown out by the Buddhist divines to the standard orthodox doctrine of the origin of society apparently led to the theory of Contract, while the reply of the Brāhmaṇa canonists in the Manusamhitā and the Mahābhārata involved the formulation of theories largely tinged with the dogma of the divine creation and personality of the king.