History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.67.3

v4.c62.67.3

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;