History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.67
History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.67
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There are in our authorities germs of several theories about the origin of kingship. Ṛg. X. 173 (which corresponds to Atharvaveda VI. 87 and 88. 1–2) has been taken as an election hymn by some writers (e. g. Jayaswal in ‘Hindu polity’ p. 7). But one is constrained to say that it is probably nothing of the kind. The only words that may lend some colour to the theory of election are ‘let all the people desire thee (as king)’ in Ṛg. X. 173. 1, but those words may apply as a benediction even in the case of one who is already a king. In the Atharvaveda III. 4. 2 there³⁹ is a reference to the election of a king by the people ‘the people (viśaḥ) chose thee to govern the kingdom, these quarters, the five goddesses (chose thee)’. In Atharvaveda III. 5, 6 and 7 also there is a faint allusion to the election of a king by nobles, king-makers, sūtas and headmen of villages, by the clever makers of chariots and the skilled workers in metals. These ‘king-makers’ are called ‘ratnins’ in other Vedic texts and the Tai. Br. I. 7.3 states in connection with the twelve offerings in the Rājasūya called ‘ratnināṁ havīṁṣi’ that the ‘ratnins’ give the (rāṣṭra) kingdom (to the king). Vide H. Dh. vol. II. p. 1215 n 2648 and p. 1216 for the ‘ratnins’. So it appears that the conception was that the king got the kingdom from nobles, high functionaries and the common people. For the coronation bath (and its implications) mentioned in the Ait. Br. vide note 105 below. The Ayodhyākāṇḍa (chap.
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1 and 2) describes how Daśaratha when he grew old desired to make his eldest son Rāma the Crown Prince (yuvarāja), how he called together an assembly of vassal kings, citizens and rural inhabitants and placed before the assembly his idea, how they acclaimed loudly the old emperor’s proposal and readily gave their consent. This shows that though kingship became hereditary in course of time some element of popular approval was sought for. But such passages referring to the approval of the people cannot be stretched to mean that the king was chosen by a parliament the members of which were elected by the people. All that happened appears to have been only this that citizens that approved assembled spontaneously and expressed their feelings in the assembly. In the Rāmāyaṇa II. 67. 2 it is said that when Daśaratha died sages like Mārkaṇḍeya and Vāmadeva declared along with the *amātyas* in the presence of the family priest (purohita) Vasiṣṭha that as Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa had gone into exile and Bharata and Śatrughna were in the Kekaya country, some scion of the Ikṣvāku race should be chosen as king. These sages and ministers are spoken of as king-makers (‘rāja-kartāraḥ’) here and in chap. 79. 1. In the Ādiparva 44. 6 it is stated that all the citizens of the capital in one voice elected Janamejaya, though a boy, as a king on the death of Parikṣit and Janamejaya ruled with the help of his ministers and purohita. There are historical examples of the election of kings.
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The *kṣatrapa* Rudradāman was elected king by the people of Surāṣṭra (who at one time formed a republic, acc. to Kauṭilya XI. 1) and he took an oath as stated in his Junagadh inscription in the year 72 (150 A. D.).⁴⁰ Vide E. I. Vol. VIII p. 36 at p. 40. Gopāla, the founder of the Pāla dynasty of Bengal (730-740 A. D.), was elected a king (E. I. Vol. IV. p. 243 at p. 248 and Jayaswal's ‘History of India,’ 150-350 A. D. pp. 44-45). It appears that it was the business of the chief ministers and brāhmaṇas to propose somebody as king and such persons were called ‘rājakartāraḥ’. In Ayodhyā 67. 8 they say ‘our country is without a ruler and may therefore encounter disaster’. Arājaka does not necessarily mean in Ayodhyā 67 anarchy but a condition in which there is no king nor ruler. Though this is so, it is not possible to agree with Mr. K. P. Jayaswal (‘Hindu Polity’, part I, pp. 97-98, 134, 173) that ‘arājaka’ was ‘an idealistic constitution, that it was an extreme democracy almost Tolstoian in ideal, that it was based on a legal and communal basis, that it was a case of extreme individualism in which government itself was regarded as an evil.’ Ayodhyā 67. 8-31, Ādi. 41. 27 ff., Śānti 67. 3 ff., Matsyapurāṇa 225. 8-9 are the principal passages on arājaka. A perusal of these will convince any one not carried away by the over-patriotic desire to find the latest European thought in our ancient books that *arājaka* was viewed as a state of chaos and the negation of any constitution;
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that when a country was without a ruler, no private property in anything existed or was respected and people preyed upon each other like fishes (Ayodhyā 67. 31) and that no Tolstoian ideals were present before the eyes of the writers that drew such a harrowing picture of a State without a ruler. The famous Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang notices (vide Beal's Buddhist Records of the Western World, 1884, vol. I. pp. 210-216) that when Rājyavardhana was treacherously murdered by king Śaśāṅka, the great minister Bhaṇḍin (who was also a cousin of Harṣa) called an assembly of ministers and made to the young Harṣavardhana a proposal to assume the royal authority, which proposal was backed up by all the ministers and magistrates, that thereupon Harṣa agreed to become king after consulting the oracle of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva. After the death of Parameśvaravarman II (of the Pallava dynasty), when the Pallava kingdom was subject to anarchy, the subjects chose a king. For the details of this election, vide the important constitutional document of the Vaikuṇṭha Perumal temple (Dr. C. Minakshi's 'Administration and Social life under the Pallavas', 1938, p. 38). The Rājataraṅgiṇī narrates (V. 461-463) that Yaśaaskara who was originally a poor man was chosen as king by the brāhmaṇas.