A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.78.4

c8.s3.78.4

Those who steal the king's property sink for a long time into a deep, terrible, unprosperous, and senseless hell.∗ Here, it will be observed, the teacher combines, in an attempt to justify the principle of authority, the conceptions relating as well to the essential importance of the king's office as to his divinity. The latter idea, it may be further noted, is derived from a metaphorical assimilation of the king's functions with those of five specified deities: the divinity, in other words, is held in this case to apply to the king's office rather than to his person. With the twofold notion of kingship just mentioned, the author connects, in the above extract, a list of duties on the part of the subjects, which he tries to enforce as usual by the threat of spiritual and temporal penalties. The duties, lastly, with which the subjects are charged in this case, are not merely, as in the preceding passage, of a negative kind: they pass by an insensible gradation from the negative act of non-slandering and of non-stealing, to the positive obligation of obeying the king's commands and sharing his burdens.