Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c51.26

c51.26

§ 365. This type of Hindu Imperialism was also known as "Chakravartin-system". It has reference to '*the arena where the imperial wheel moved unobstructed*'. The basic idea again is territory. In the place of the old 'up-to-ocean' limit it substituted a new definition—from Cape Comorin to Kashmir.¹ The Chakravartin ideal had been in the air certainly as early as 570 B. C. and presumably earlier. The Buddha took it from the phraseology of politics and proclaimed the foundation of the Empire of his Religion (Dharma-Chakra). 'Conquest', 'Conquest,' 'nothing but Conquest,' and to create oneness by that Conquest, was the breath of the eastern Hindus in 600-500 B. C. The Buddha claimed to be a Chakravartin-emperor and the Mahāvīra, another great teacher, claimed to be the Conqueror (Jina) of his time. As in the Moghul period the air was surcharged with the idea of founding Badsbahis both in religion and in politics, so some two thousand years before people thought nothing but of unifying the continent by conquest in religion and in politics.