A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c9.85

c9.85

householders."\* While thus distinguishing between the different shades of punishment, Kauṭilya agrees with the older teachers on the fundamental point relating to the conception of punishment as the guarantee of social order. For he writes, in the lines immediately following those we have quoted, "When indeed (punishment is) not applied (at all), it produces (the state of anarchy known as) the mātsyanyāya, for in the absence of one who wields the sceptre the strong man devours the weak, (but the weak man) being protected by the king prevails (over the strong)."\†