A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.27.3

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\*.