A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c7.10

c7.10

In the Atharvaveda the conception of the kingly divinity is inculcated in the form of a general doctrine. In one of its hymns, intended in the ritual book to accompany the consecration of the king, occurs the following passage. "Him approaching all waited upon (pari-bhūṣ); clothing himself in fortune, he goes about (car), having own brightness; great is that name of the virile (vṛṣan) Asura; having all forms, he approacheth immortal things."(∗) This stanza is copied from a verse of the Rigveda (†) addressed to the god Indra. It is safe to conjecture that the transference of the divine epithets to the human subject involves a conscious attempt to identify the king with the God. Further, the extract just quoted seems to refer directly to the "divinity that doth hedge a king." For it applies to the king the phrase the name of the 'virile Asura' (asurasya nāma), which in the original hymn corresponds with a term (asuryam) meaning the divinity in which the gods clothe themselves.(‡)