A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.73

c8.s3.73

various kinds of weapons would be hurled against the virtuous; vice would be approved; the parents, the aged persons, the preceptors and the guests would suffer pain or death; there would be neither disapproval of adultery nor agriculture nor trade-routes; virtue would perish and the Vedas would not exist; there would be no sacrifices attended with rich presents according to rule, no marriages and no convivial meetings; every one would perish in an instant, being afflicted with fear and troubled in heart, uttering cries of woe and losing consciousness. When the king affords protection, it is urged on the other hand, the people sleep with the doors of their houses unbarred; the women, decked with all ornaments and unguarded by males, fearlessly walk about the streets; the people practise virtue instead of harming one another; the three classes perform great sacrifices of various kinds; the science of agriculture and trade (vārttā) which is the root of this world exists in good order.∗ The gist of the long extract just quoted may perhaps be expressed by saying that the happiness and indeed the existence of the people, the institutions of society, the rules of morality and religion as well as the sciences and the arts, depend upon the king’s office, or, to put it in a more general way, these have their being in the organised political society represented as usual by the monarchic State. Apart from its value as thus constituting a strong argument in favour of the king’s authority, the above passage has, we think, another significance. For it expresses in the course of the argument the author's conception of what may be called the natural state of man, the state, *i.e.*, in which there is no political superior. This of course excludes—and here we touch on one of the central ideas of the Hindu political thinkers—a belief in the natural instinct of man as itself forming the cement of social life. Furthermore, in the passage just quoted, the 'State of Nature,' as it may well be called, is specifically conceived as a condition of wild anarchy—a conception which, we think, here finds its first expression in Hindu literature, if we ignore the slight reference in a Brāhmaṇa text which has been quoted in another place.∗ The importance of this notion in subsequent times as forming the historical background of the theories of the origin of kingship will, it is hoped, be sufficiently demonstrated in the course of the following pages.