A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c6.8

c6.8

in the extant literature of India and in its traditional lists of sciences (vidyās)\*, or to the multiplicity of its practical arts (kalās)† and the multiple developments of its State consciousness.‡ The same purpose is likely to be served by a careful study of the story of the development of the Hindu mind that is unfolded in these pages. This, it is expected, will show that the State was regarded in Hindu eyes as an essential instrument for securing not merely the whole life, but also the bare existence, of the people. This conception led not only in the ‘secular’ Arthaśāstra but also in the later Brahminical canon to the view that the State was within certain limits virtually an end in itself. Another point that it is hoped to demonstrate in the course of this work is that the Hindu scheme of social order involved not merely the horizontal division into orders (āśramas) but also the vertical division into classes (varṇas), besides involving the king who was in many respects *sui generis*. In this scheme the Kṣatriya householder was required to be not merly "god-fearing and sacrificing," but also to protect all other classes. The function of protection, indeed, was the special province of the king, and so highly was it esteemed that the kingly duty (rājadharma) was held in the Mahābhārata to be equivalent in moral values to the duties of the four castes and the four orders put together. Above all the primary law of self-preservation was held in such great respect in the Brahminical canon that individuals and classes were permitted for the sake of livelihood to assume in times of difficulty abnormal functions which were aptly designated as emergency duties (āpaddharma). In the sphere of public life the application of this principle is illustrated by the rule of the Mahābhārata authorising all classes to take up arms in self-defence 'when the king's power wanes and the social order vanishes,' as well as by the injunction requiring submission to any one, even a Śūdra, who saves society from anarchy.