History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.124

v4.c62.124

The duty to protect involved fighting and probable death. Therefore the ancient works on dharma-śāstra always insist that it is the duty of the kṣatriya to fight and that death on the battlefield is to be his highest ideal. Manu (VII. 87-89) enjoins upon the king, when protecting his subjects against invasion, not to run away from battle and promises heaven as the reward for kings who die fighting in battle. Yāj. I. 324 holds forth the same reward for all soldiers who are killed in battle. Vide Strīparva 2.16 and 18 and 11. 8-9. The Bhagavadgītā (II. 31-37) most solemnly declares that there is nothing higher for a kṣatriya than a righteous war, that a kṣatriya's duty requires him not to quail in battle, that if he dies in battle he goes to heaven and if he survives he rules over the world, that he should fight as a duty without caring for gain or loss, victory or defeat and if he fights with this attitude no sin attaches to him. Śāntiparva 78. 31 states that just as those who join in the bath of the king at the end of the Aśvamedha are purified of all sins, so all soldiers (of whatever caste and on whatever side) killed in battle become pure by the destruction of their sins. Manu (VII. 94-95) sets out the results for a soldier when he flees from the battlefield. Parāśara⁷¹ III. 37 says "Two men pierce the orb of the sun (i. e. reach heavenly worlds) viz. an ascetic endowed with Yoga and a soldier killed while facing the enemy" and the following verses (III. 38 ff) dilate upon how the slain warrior is waited upon in heaven by divine damsels. A verse of the Ṛgveda X. 154. 3 (= Atharva 18. 2. 17) appears to hold that warriors losing life in battle reap the same rewards that those who make gifts of a thousand cows in sacrifices secure.⁷² It is probably this passage which Kauṭilya has in mind when in X. 3 he refers to the Veda for inciting the soldiers to fight without regard to life. Āp. Dh. S. (II. 10. 26. 2-3) states that a king, who strives to recover the wealth of brāhmaṇas (stolen by thieves) and dies in the effort, is said to perform a sacrifice, in which his body is the sacrificial post and the fees are incalculable and that other valiant men losing life in fighting for a (good) cause are in a similar position. To die fighting for the protection of cows and brāhmaṇas is specially commended (vide Śānti 21. 19 and 77. 28 and 30). The Viṣṇudharmasūtra III. 44-46 prescribes 'there is no duty for kings equal to losing one's life in battle; those who meet death in protecting a cow, a brāhmaṇa, a king, a friend, their own wealth and their wife enter heaven as also those who meet death in preventing confusion of varṇas (caused by adultery &c.).' On the eve of battle the great warrior Bhīṣma says to his officers 'it is a sinful act for a kṣatriya to die in his house from some disease; the ancient code of conduct for him is that he should meet death from steel' (Bhīṣmaparva 17. 11). The same idea is presented in Śalyaparva 5. 32, Śānti 97. 23 and 25.