History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.67.4

v4.c62.67.4

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.