A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.103

c8.s3.103

From these remarks relating more or less to the general nature of the early Arthaśāstra statecraft, we proceed to consider the ideas underlying a specific branch of the same, the branch, namely, that is concerned with the rule of punishment (daṇḍa). In this case it might be doubted whether the Arthaśāstra broke absolutely new ground, since Gautama, the author of the Dharmaśāstra, hints in one place at the function of punishment as a restraining influence. However that may be, Kauṭilya quotes in one passage a particular authority as saying, on the ground that there was no such means of bringing people under control as punishment, that the king should be ever ready to inflict this. Of the same nature is the view of Bhāradvāja quoted from his discourse to king Śatruñjaya in Chapter CXL of the Śāntiparvan. "Let him (viz. the king) be ever ready to strike, his prowess constantly displayed; himself without a loophole, he should watch the loophole (of the enemy) and should seize the weak point of his foes. Of him who is ever ready to strike, the world stands very much in awe; let him therefore make all creatures subject to himself by the employment of force."[^asterisk] As these verses occur with slight changes in the Manusaṃhitā,dagger we have a corroborative evidence testifying to their antiquity. In the above passages, it will be observed, punishment is conceived as the grand engine of social order. Another verse which is similarly common to the Manusaṃhitā and the Mahābhārata goes further, and claims that punishment is, as it were, the active and beneficent Providence watching over the affairs of men. "Punishment alone governs all created beings, punishment alone protects them, punishment watches over them while they sleep; the wise declare punishment (to be identical with) the law."[^ddagger] The idea first mentioned, namely, that punishment is the great instrument of social order, receives a psychological setting in a third verse which is found alike in the Mahābhārata, and the Manusaṃhitā. "The whole world is kept in order by punishment, for a guiltless man is hard to find; through fear of punishment the whole world yields the enjoyments (which it owes)".[^section]