The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c5.4

c5.4

The Method of Study. A discussion, based on scanty and dispersed materials, partly of uncertain dates, is bound to be perfunctory at best. Besides, there is the risk of reading modern or preconceived notions into the terms and documents of ancient times of which the atmosphere is so difficult to re-capture. One may be tempted to dismiss the polity of ancient India as mere "Oriental Despotism" which requires no further analysis and evaluation. Or one may import into antiquity the spirit and ideals of modern times. Again, such is the nature of our documents that isolated statements readily adapt themselves to attractive hypotheses and generalisations. The warning uttered by Professor Keith in regard to the Rigveda applies to much else in the range of Hindu literature, epigraphy and numismatics. "It is easy," he writes, "to frame and support by plausible evidence various hypotheses, to which the only effective objection is that other hypotheses are equally legitimate and that the facts are too imperfect to allow of conclusions being drawn."¹ Caution, indeed, must be the governing principle of all endeavours to elucidate the political ideas and institutions of the ancient Hindus For instance, it is desirable to work on the assumption of later dates of books for which higher chronological limits are possible but not at all certain. To antedate any phenomena would be to weaken the very foundations of whatever hypotheses one may build. Another caution, equally essential, is to resist the ever-present temptation of “combining information.” A picture, constructed from texts separated by hundreds or thousands of years, may be fascinating in its fulness but may not be true of any given epoch. Similarly, documents from regions far apart cannot be used for a single area. In the uncertainty of dates and the obscurity of the whole subject, every document should, as a general rule, be handled by itself and then joined to others only on the surest possible ground. The application of the most rigid critical standards alone can serve to illuminate the subject and, it may be, to add a new chapter to the science of Comparative Politics.