A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.131

c8.s3.131

Such is the famous theory of the origin of kingship framed by the Buddhist canonists, which for its striking analogy to the Western theories of Social Contract has sometimes been called by the same designation.[^\ddagger] We shall examine in a later chapter how far the title is justified. Meanwhile we shall try to analyse the component elements of the above theory, our remarks being mainly confined to its fuller version alone. The Buddhist theory, it will appear from the above, starts with the conception of a mythical perfect age when men were not subject to the ills of the flesh and the frailties of human nature. This was followed by a period of growing degeneracy and accumulating evil which in the canonical story furnished the occasion for the creation of organised society. Thus the Buddhist state of nature, as it might be called, has its basis in mythology: it purports to be a historical fact and is certainly not a mere philosophical concept. From this condition the transition was effected to the next, according to the author, by a series of agreements involving the creation of kingship as well as of the institutions of family and property. Thus the Buddhist theory seems to involve two sets of contracts which, translated into the language of Western political philosophy, would be called the Social and the Governmental contracts respectively. With the first which implies the creation of an organised society we have no concern. The second, resulting in the creation of the State, implies two contracting parties, namely on the one hand the people, and on the other the king whose very title indicates his elective origin. The terms of the contract, lastly, involve merely the exchange of the just exercise of the sovereign power on the king's part for the payment of the specified taxes by the people. The contract, in other words, gives a historical basis in the past to that view of the relation of taxation to protection which we have found to occur in one of the Dharmasūtras and which, we think, is one of the root ideas of Hindu political philosophy.