Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c48.8

c48.8

§ 354. With this defined position, shackled with the checks and limitations we have noticed, subjugated under the great constitutional power of the Paura-Jānapada, with a conscience trained to be prone to listen to the public voice, his position really was that of the Servant of State, or rather as our forefathers put it mercilessly, of a drudging '*slave*' (*dāsya*) The epic exhibits as an ideal that a king should even give up his dear wife if asked to do so by his subjects: a popular and somewhat crude way of expressing the king's position, but all the same enshrining the radical demand of Hindu constitution from its king to sink his individuality into his office. With such principles the king was virtually a constitutional slave. Even the Hindu Hobbes, the great monarchist Kauṭilya, would not allow the king to have personal likes or dislikes: "A "king has no personal likes; it is the "likes of the subjects (that should be followed "by him)."²