History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c62.86

v4.c62.86

Several brāhmaṇa families founded kingdoms and empires. Puṣyamitra, founder of the Śuṅga empire, was a brāhmaṇa (Harivaṁśa III. 2. 35 ff, E. I. vol. 20 p. 54); the Kāṇvāyanas, who followed the Śuṅgas, were brāhmaṇas and so were the Vākāṭakas, the Kadambas (vide Taḷagunda pillar Inscription of Kakusthavarman in E. I. vol. VIII. p. 24) and several others. Vide H. Dh. vol. II. pp. 122-123 for texts on the question as to when a brāhmaṇa should follow the profession of arms. Manu XII. 100 states that a brāhmaṇa who knows the Veda deserves to be made a king, a commander-in-chief, the wielder of the power of punishment. Kumārila's dictum that persons of all varṇas are seen to be rulers has been already quoted. Gopāla the founder of the Pāla dynastry of Bengal was a śūdra. Manu IV. 61 directs a brāhmaṇa not to stay in a country where the ruler was a śūdra. Medhātithi⁴⁷ explains this by saying that the prohibition applies only to a country where all the seven high functionaries such as the chief minister, the commander-in-chief are of the śūdra caste; compare Āp. Dh. S. I. 11. 32. 18. Manu's dictum related to a time when there was hardly any śūdra king. But the logic of facts was too much for Medhātithi who had to twist the plain words of Manu. Medhātithi on Manu VIII. 1 remarks that ‘persons of other varṇas who subsist by the mode prescribed for kṣatriyas have power over the kingdom and have to protect the people’. Śāntiparva remarks that whoever protects people from the hordes of dasyus and wields the power of punishment according to smṛti rules must be considered as king. The Harivaṁśa (III. 3. 6 ‘akṣatriyāśca rājāno viprāḥ śūdropajīvinaḥ’) and some of the Purāṇas in depicting the awful degeneracy of the Kali age in a prophetic strain state that the kings in the Kali age will be mostly śūdras and that śūdra kings will celebrate Aśvamedha sacrifices. Vide, for example, Matsya 144.40 and 43 and Liṅgapurāṇa 40. 7 and 42. Hiouen Thsang notices that in the first half of the 7th century A. D. Sind was under a śūdra king (Beal's B. R. W. W. vol. II. p. 272).