A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.12

c8.s3.12

Let us next consider the ideas and notions of the Dharmasūtras which tend to counteract the above doctrine of the king's authority. To begin with the most fundamental point, the concept of Dharma implies, as we have seen before, that the king is governed in the whole course of his conduct by a body of rules claiming to derive their origin from the highest source, namely the will of the Supreme Being. Specifically, this responsibility to the Divine Law is illustrated in the rule of the Dharmasūtras making the king liable to sin for the unjust exercise of his power.∗ The Dharmasūtras invoke the aid of the penitential discipline to enforce the duty of just government upon the king.† With this may be connected the fact that Gautama imposes an intellectual training as well as moral discipline upon the king.‡ The sanction of spiritual or temporal penalty, however, it should be observed in the present place, is not the only incentive to the king's good government. For the authors of the Dharmasūtras inculcate protection by making the king participate in the spiritual merits and demerits of the subjects.∗ While in the above cases the king's duty is derived directly from the Divine Will, a somewhat rational basis of the same is suggested, by a passage of Baudhāyana. He writes, "Let the king protect (his) subjects receiving as his pay a sixth part."† In this passage is evidently involved the view that the king is an official paid by the subjects for the service of protection. In this case the king's duty of protection would follow as a logical corollary from his collection of taxes. This doctrine of the relation of taxation to protection is of great importance in Hindu political theory. The later writers recur to it far down into the Middle Ages, and it is incorporated in the theories, Buddhistic as well as Brahminical, of the origin of kingship.‡