The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c21.67.2

c21.67.2

The fact remains that the growth of ideas and cultural styles in India can be adequately explained on the basis of Indian causes. On Hindu political theory Greek influence is conspicuous by its absence. Nowhere in the entire range of that speculation is there any such break or new turn as the impact of the virile, profound political philosophy of Greece would tend to produce. The little development which Hindu political thought displays is fully explicable on variations in the degree of secularity in different groups of compositions, on the rise of new creeds which necessitated a re-statement of the political theory attached to old religious schools and on the mutual approach of the various lines of thought thus started. In Manu and a few other writers the term Yavana is used loosely to indicate one of the hordes which lay beyond the Hindu pale. There are indeed a few isolated passages which, *prima facie*, suggest Greek influence. For instance, Aśvaghoṣa in his Saundara Nandam Kâvyam remarks that some princes founded a city but discovered that if its affairs were to prosper they must have a king. So they raised to rulership one of themselves who was senior to the rest in age, discipline and accomplishments.¹ Here a city is a state, its government is elective and secular in origin. But even here is nothing essentially new to Hindu thought, nothing that could not have arisen from the impact of Buddhist philosophy on the line of thought represented by the Mahâbhârata.