A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.27

Language: English

c9.27.1

From this view of the king’s relations with the other factors of sovereignty, let us turn to the broader theory of his relations with his subjects. It is characteristic of the intensely practical nature of the author that for the most part one looks in vain for such a theory in his work. Nevertheless there is at least one remarkable passage which, however much it might be pointed to the practical end of ensuring the internal security of the State, embodies a view of the source and nature of the king's authority. Even this, it seems to us, represents what may be called the current theory of the times rather than an original contribution of Kauṭilya's genius. For it is addressed, as it is hoped to show presently, to the man in the street, as it were.∗ In the chapter in which the above passage occurs Kauṭilya describes the measures that the king should adopt for winning over the friendly as well as the hostile factions within his kingdom. In the course of this description he states that a specific class of spies called the satrins should divide themselves into contending parties and carry on disputations in places of pilgrimage, in assemblies, in residences, in corporate bodies and amid congregations of people.

c9.27.2

One spy should speak, "This kingly class is heard to be endowed with all qualities, but no quality of it is seen which causes the folk in country and town to be burdened with fines and punishments." Another spy should contradict the first and those who concur with the latter by speaking in the following way. People overcome by anarchy (mātsyanyāyābhibhūtāḥ) selected Manu, the son of the Sun, as their king and they fixed one-sixth of the grain, one-tenth of the merchandise as well as gold, to be the king's due (bhāgadheya). Supported by this, the kings become capable of promoting the security and prosperity of their subjects, so that they take away the sins of the latter in the event of their failure to inflict just punishments and levy just taxes. Kings in fact promote the security and prosperity of their subjects. Hence even the hermits living in the forest offer the king one-sixth of the grain gleaned by them, stating that it is a tax payable to the person who protects them. The kings who are the visible dispensers of slights and favours occupy the position of the gods Indra and Yama. He who slights them is afflicted with divine punishment. Therefore the kings should not be slighted. Thus the lowly persons should be contradicted.∗ This extract, we think, is an important landmark in the evolution of the Hindu theories of kingship.

c9.27.3

Kauṭilya here evidently starts with the idea of justifying the king’s authority,—the idea, that inspired in part the theories of kingship in the canonical Dharmasūtras and the secular Arthaśāstra. For the whole point of his story consists in its answering the apparent anomaly involved in the statement of the first spy quoted above, namely that the kingly class is heard to be endowed with all good qualities, but no quality of it is seen which causes the people in country and town to be burdened with fines and punishments. With the above object, then, Kauṭilya invokes the doctrine of the king’s divine nature, interpreting it like the earlier writers in the sense that the dignity pertains to the king’s office. From this follows, as in the earlier examples, the corollary that the subjects are bound to abstain from slighting the king—an obligation which, as before, is sought to be supported by spiritual sanctions. Along with this familiar notion of the king’s divinity is conjoined in the above extract in a kind of incongruous union a remarkable and, as it seems to us, original application of the theory of elective origin of the king. This virtually involves a Brahmanised adaptation of the Buddhist theory of contract. Like the latter it starts with the conception of an original state of nature. While the canonist, however, conceives it to be initially a perfect state, the secular writer considers it to be wholly evil from the first\*.