Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.25

v2.c11.25

¹ This drought and its dreadful consequences came about because there was no king in the land. As elsewhere in the East, the prince according to Indian literature and particularly the MBh. is the source and origin of all that happens in his kingdom; he is a blessing or a disaster for his land, equal to all the gods, destiny, the ladder to heaven or to hell; he makes the sun to shine, the fire to burn, rules as the god of wind and of the sea, is Çiva and Vishnu; he makes the four ages of the world, all power is set in him—and that by the Brahmans, and so forth ad infinitum. This flower of princely apotheosis had its roots, indeed, in the ground of reality. The king in Old India often made his subjects' lives very uncomfortable, and he was often of most benefit when he—slept (Cardonne, Mélanges de lit. orient., 1788, i, 17, and the precious remarks of Hopkins, India Old and New, p. 234. Now above all the king makes it to rain, and this not only through his fitness as a ruler, but through his magical presence itself; where there is no king the fruitful moisture does not fall. But the king also brings the curse of drought on his land if he is evil, while under the good king the gift of rain in right measure is poured on the kingdom, which is the beginning and end of all for India, the land of agriculture. On this subject see my note on p. 344 of the Daçakum., and with it cp. Manu, ix, 246, 247; Tawney, Prabandhacintāmaṇi, 70; Vikramorv., iv, between str. 3 and 4; Jātaka, i, p. 94; v, 193; Rückert's