The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c8.19

c8.19

It is the Dharma Sūtras which are of real interest to the student of society and politics. Caste is fully developed in all of them. So, too, the Āśramadharma which divides the life of a twice-born man—a member of any of the three higher castes—into four stages, studentship, household, retirement and renunciation. All the Dharma Sūtras and, following them, the Dharma Śāstras, want the scheme of the duties of the four castes and four stages to be enforced by the government. It is, however, remarkable that all of them recognise two sorts of punishments for many sins, one to be inflicted by the government, and the other, a penance rather than a regular punishment, to be undergone by the sinner voluntarily or to be forced on him by those who wish him well in this, and particularly, in the next life. So, the sanctions, to use a modern term, are both civil and spiritual. It is sometimes difficult to say to which class a writer attaches greater importance. Gautama and Baudhāyana lend colour to the hypothesis that a system of penances, voluntary and enforced, was the earliest Hindu way of promoting virtue and punishing sin and that justice in the modern sense of the term was introduced only later. Sir Henry Maine supposed that rules of conduct were first worked out by priestly lawyers who later addressed themselves to the kingly power to have them enforced.¹ The facts, as known, do not support Maine's theory. From the prominence of penances in the Dharmaśāstras and Purāṇas, it appears that civil and spiritual jurisdictions in moral life ran concurrently.