Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c39.43

c39.43

Hindu theory of kingship was not permitted to degenerate into a divine imposture and profane autocracy. Jugglery in the divine name of the Creator was not possible for the Hindu King as the race never allowed the craft of the Priest to be united in the office of the Ruler. The reason why the sceptre of Hindu sovereign never became the wand of magician, was that the matter of constitutional powers of the king, in fact, lay beyond the province of the ritualist and the priest. It lay in the hands of those ‘through whose strength’ the king had become ‘mighty’ or vested with the power. It lay in their Samiti in the early period. In later times it lay in the equally important machinery—the Paura-and-Janapada.