Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c4.t3.17

c4.t3.17

POPULAR OPINIONS These and similar instances leave no doubt as to the general autocracy prevailing among the kings. In this connection it would be interesting for our purpose to note some of the popular opinions about the King expressed in the stories. There is no one, so we hear, who does not feel afraid when he hears that it is a king.⁸ Amongst the two—the fowler and the bird Bodhisattathe former, an experienced man, saying that “Kings, verily are fickle-minded (*calacittā*)” is to our mind, more correct than the latter, a protagonist of Law and Morality, who says that “Kings are wise and understand goodly words”.¹ Similarly the hunter of the *Rohantamiga Jātaka*² and the *Hamsa Jātaka*,³ who sets a stag free, seems to pronounce a fact when he says that “Kings are cruel,” *rājāno nāma kakkhalā*. Is it an exaggeration—what a man utters in a *gāthā* in the *Sattigumbha Jātaka*⁴: “Kings are like blazing bonfires and most perilous to come near”? Elsewhere⁵ a sage warns his young novice against sovereign lords whom he compares with snakes which may stain holy men. The experienced old lion speaks out a simple truth that “Kings have many stratagems” *anekamāyā rājāno*.⁶ “Hard are the ways of kings: what will happen no one can tell,” these are the utterances of a learned minister of a king.⁷ The characteristically sound advice given by Vidhura to those who aspire to attain honour in the kings court⁸ we may doubt, and incline to dismiss it as ideological only, but some of the home-truths therein embodied are worth our consideration. For instance, when he says that “the king does not count as a common person: the king must not be paired with anyone else: kings are easily vexed as the eye is hurt if touched by a barley-awn,”⁹ does he not utter the truth as already shown above? “Win favour in the eyes of the Great (i.e., the king) for one day: it is enough for a life-time,” so remarks a learned scholar of the type of Uddālaka.¹⁰ What wonder, then, if the king should become so bold as to say, “I am king of Benares: there is nothing I cannot do.”¹¹