Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c6.25

c6.25

The Mahābhārata theories of the origin of government, or rather, the state, present some striking points of comparison and contrast with European theory. In a passage of poetic brilliance the Vana-parva records how in very ancient days men lived a pure, godly life. They were, in fact, equal to gods. They could ascend to the heavens and return to earth at will. The wishes of all were fulfilled. Sufferings were few and real trouble or fear was none. Perfect virtue and happiness reigned. The span of life extended over thousands of years. But all this changed after a long while. The Śānti-parva, too, has it that there was at first a sort of Golden Age where-in existed neither sovereignty nor king, neither chastisement nor chastiser. All men used to protect one another righteously. But after a while their hearts were assailed by error. Their faculties of perception were clouded; their virtue declined; greed and avarice set in. The downward course continued. Wrath disturbed human relations and then came the blight of unrestrained sexual indulgence. Distinctions between virtue and vice vanished. The Vedas disappeared and righteousness came to an end. Now the gods were alarmed. The extinction of pious rites and sacrifices on earth, the essence of which sustains the celestial beings threatened them with distress and fall.¹ They approached Viṣṇu who composed an all-comprehensive treatise. "Indicate, O God," said the gods to Viṣṇu, "that one among mortals who deserves to have superiority over the rest." But Viṣṇu did not think fit to invest any of the existing individuals with authority. He reflected a little and, by a fiat of his will, produced out of his own energy a son named Virajas. But the dynasty founded by Virajas came to grief when Veṇa, one of his descendants, became a slave of his passions. The higher powers intervened once again. The sceptre was entrusted to the son of Veṇa who expressed his willingness to perform any useful task entrusted to him. The gods and the Ṛiṣis charged him to discipline himself, to maintain and enforce the Vedic religion and precepts, to persevere in righteousness, to look at all creatures with an equal eye, and never to act from caprice.² Here is a clear conception of the state of nature which preceded political society. There, for a while, men lived according to righteousness, an idea which reminds one of Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke and even the Rousseau of the Discourses. But divine interposition, not mere human effort, is called in to rectify the rottenness in which the Golden Age had ended. Another theory of the origin of the state which Mahābhārata has preserved brings us a little nearer Hobbes. It paints the state of nature not as a Golden Age of righteousness but as a period of terrible anarchy. Men dined on one another