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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t31: Mahābhārata Politics later than Arthaśāstra

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t31

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Mahābhārata Politics later than Arthaśāstra

c11.s1.t31.1

According to Jolly political science is to be found in an embryonic or primitive condition in the *Mahābhārata* and therefore its relevant portions must be older than the *Arthaśāstra*. This position is challenged by Meyer. The relation between the *Arthaśāstra* and the *Mahābhārata* is according to him identical with that between Nārada on the one side and Manu, Yājnavalkya, Viṣṇu and Gautama on the other. Nārada is a scientifically trained scholar, and a person with a juridical frame of mind whereas Manu, Yājnavalkya and the rest are eclecticists, popularizers, dilettantes. The same dilettantism, eclectic and unscientific character, the *Smriti*-attitude is to be found in the writers of politics in the *Mahābhārata*. In fact, there the *rājadharma* is but a part of *Dharmaśāstra*.

c11.s1.t31.2

These dilettantes of the *Mahābhārata* betray in their writings that they know an *Arthaśāstra* which is not of the alleged "embryonic stage" but even more developed than the Kauṭalyan work. The grouping of facts and phenomena by mathematical figures is an instance of post-Kauṭalyan progress in political thought. The enumerations like 14 *rājadoṣas*, 8 *buddhis*, 36 *guṇas*, 8 *varṇas*, 20 *vargas*, 10 *vyasanas* derived from *kāma*, 8 *varṇas*, due to *krodha*, all point to investigations unknown to and later than Kauṭalya. Had the subject-matter of *vyasanas* acquired such a complexity in Kauṭalya's time, he, as a specialist and not a mere dilettante in politics, would have cared to insert it in his book.

Cites (8)