Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c39.24

c39.24

§ 245. The theory of the Mānava was never approved or adopted by a single subsequent law-book. By constitutional writers the very theory was converted into a divine theory of the servitude of the king to the subject²; that the king was a mere servant or slave of the people and that he was made so by the Creator. Even in the Mānava itself, either when it was revised and put in its present form, or originally in its desire to justify the removal of the Mauryas, the theory was superseded by another theory which was inserted immediately below it :—