Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.t1.2

c4.t1.2

OF the four principal theories or conceptions about the origin of kingship, viz., Divine origin, origin in war, the theory of contract and the theory of elective kingship,¹ the last seems to have been more, in fact the only one, familiar to the *Jātakas*. In common with the united Hindu tradition—whether Brāhmaṇa, Buddhist or Jaina—, the *Jātakas*, as of course reflecting the general Buddhist thought, envisage a state of anarchy in the pre-State epoch when there was all disorder, the stronger devouring the weaker. This is characteristically exemplified in an anecdote contained in the *Mahāsutasoma Jātaka*² which relates how the larger fish (*mahāmaccha*) used to devour the smaller ones. This story *inter alia* brings before us the papular notion of the anarchical state known as the *Mātsya Nyāya*,³ in some respects corresponds to the Darwinian "Struggle for existence", the Spencerian "Survival of the Fittest", the Marxian "Class Struggle", and is based on the avowed principle of "Might is Right". The *Ulūka Jātaka*,⁴ which is in more than one aspects a veritable embodiment of Constitutional procedure, preserves for us the then prevailing popular notion about the 'Election of the King' in the dawn of History (*pathama Kappa*). "Once upon a time," says the *Jātaka*, "the people who lived in the first Cycle of the world gathered together, and took for their king a certain man, handsome, auspicious, commanding, altogether perfect."⁵ This of course refers us to the fuller version of the famous discourse on Creation of Kingship contained in the *Ajjañña Suttanta* of the *Dīgha Nikāya*.⁶ There the elected king is called Mahāsammata or 'chosen by general consent (the Great Elect) who is known to the *Jātakas*.¹ Thus the human and at the same time elective origin of kingship is remembered by the *Jātakas*. But as regards the conditions of contract (social and governmental) formed in this connection, so fully described in the above *Suttanta* and other works, nothing is said.² However the basic principle of protection underlying the contract can indeed be gleaned through the isolated utterances in the *Jātakas*, as will be seen.³