A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s3.88

c8.s3.88

We may next mention a more important, and as it seems to us, original principle formulated by some of the teachers whom we are now considering. This consists in the idea of Justice or Righteousness as forming the rule of conduct on the part of the king. In the period with which we are here concerned, the classical text bearing on the above point is the long discourse of the sage Utathya, "the best of those versed in knowledge of the Supreme Being," which Bhīṣma quotes in Chs. XC-XCI of the Śāntiparvan. The most convenient approach to the idea of the teacher may perhaps be made through a number of passages inculcating on the king the necessity of his just rule. When sin is not restrained, says the sage, virtuous conduct disappears, vice reigns supreme, there is constant fear, property as well as the settled rule of the virtuous doth not exist, neither wife nor cattle nor fields nor houses are to be seen, the gods do not receive worship nor the Fathers their oblations of food, the guests are not honoured, the upper classes engaged in vows do not study the Vedas, the Brāhmaṇas do not perform the sacrifices, and the minds of men are bewildered like those of senile creatures. When the king is intoxicated, Utathya mentions further on, there are born in families owing to the confusion of duties wicked monsters as well as the sexless, the defective in limb, the mute in speech and the diseased in mind: hence the king should particularly look to the welfare of his subjects. Returning to the former point, the author says that in the event of the king being intoxicated, there arise grave evils: unrighteousness leading to admixture of the castes grows in extent: there is cold in the hot season and *vice versa*: there is drought as well as heavy rain: diseases overtake the people: comets make their approach, inauspicious planets are seen and various evil omens portending the king's destruction are visible. When the king abjures virtue and is intoxicated, the sense of property (lit. 'mine-ness') does not exist. In a later passage we learn that the four ages of the world are comprised in the king's occupation, and that the king is the representative of the age. When the king is intoxicated, the four castes, the Vedas and the four orders, are thrown into complete confusion, and likewise the three-fold sacrificial fire, the sciences as well as the sacrifices attended with presents. The king himself is the maker of creatures as well as their destroyer.∗ These passages embody, apparently for the first time, a view which, it seems to us, is peculiar to Hindu political thought, namely that unrighteousness on the king's part is the cause of disturbance of the social, the moral and even the physical order. Conversely, it would appear, the king's righteous rule is the foundation of the ordered existence of the world. Incidentally it may be noticed, the above extract declares the king in language of bold hyperbole to be the maker of his age and the arbiter of his subjects' destinies—an idea which, as here expressed, is obviously meant not so much to exalt the king's authority as to impress him with a sense of his responsibility. This conceit of the king's connection with the age-cycle is noticeable, since it is mentioned, as we hope to show later on, in the subsequent canonical as well as nītiśāstra literature.