Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c15.27

c15.27

Hindu writers are not content with laying down the broad features of organisation. They must prescribe the minutest details. They would leave nothing to the blind regulation of impulse. They will not leave anybody to rely on his own intelligence. They evince an implicit faith in the necessity of a customary standard by which all should differentiate right from wrong, good from evil. They seem to believe that the acceptance of a common way of action is the condition precedent of corporate life. It is needless to criticise the details of their manuals of conduct, but it may be stated that the fundamentals of their position can be challenged on philosophic ground. It is true that within the sphere of a caste they allow any of its members to rise to the full stature of his being. It is true again that under extraordinary circumstances they would permit a person to follow the occupations of a lower caste. But, ordinarily, they would hold everybody down to the occupation and way of life pertaining to his caste. Each man had a station allotted to him and must fulfil its duties. But as Prof. Laski remarks in his criticism of Bradley "it is the primary fact in personality as such that it has no allotted station. It wins or ought to win the station in which it may best fulfil itself. It can do so by experiment alone........ Any attempt at the division of society into 'natural classes' with 'natural' functions is bound to break down. We discover what we naturally are in terms only of what we seek to become. And the discovery is intimately our own."¹ Under the Brāhmanic scheme the son of a warrior or a trader had no chance of discovering whether he was fit for a scholastic career. Nor could a priest's children try their hand at crafts for which they might possess a natural talent.