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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s7: Society and State in Hindu Politics

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s7

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English

Society and State in Hindu Politics

c11.s7.1

The present writer notes with interest that since he raised the cry against Max Müller's over-emphasis on metaphysics and religion in the survey of Hindu culture scholars at home and abroad have cared to turn to its "positive" and secular aspects. Breloer also observes that in Max Müller's presentation the diversities in the tendencies of the Indians were exceedingly underestimated.³¹ This does not however enable Breloer to fully realize the volume and weight of the non-religious and non-philosophical strands of Hindu thought. He cannot get away from the fact that, on the whole, Indian literature was maintained and cultivated almost exclusively by the Brāhmaṇs, and that the entire literature with which he has to deal for his researches is somehow religious.

c11.s7.2

³¹ Vol. III, p. 60.

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This attitude of Breloer's does not appear to be reasonable. Even supposing that the state and its seven limbs are described in part or in full in certain texts that are known to be religious it does not imply that the state activities are not worldly and materialistic. The Hindu books were as a rule encyclopaedic and almost every treatise tried to deal with the whole duty of man. Naturally, therefore, *kāma*, *artha*, and *dharma* came to be discussed along with *mokṣa* in almost every work. The presentation of all the diverse interests of man in one complex does not render *artha* or *kāma* less positive and non-religious.³¹

c11.s7.4

The Vedas are supposed to be religious works. But the relations between the folk and the ruler that are described or referred to therein are anything but religious. *Atharva Veda* is more secular than many secular treatises. In the *Brāhmaṇas* one comes across more worldly ambitions than other-worldly ones. The *Dharma-sūtras*, *Dharma-śāstras* and *Smriti-śāstras* are again held as canonical treatises. But the daily duties of the individual, the rites and ceremonies of the family, inheritance and partition of property, the functions of kings, etc. that form the principal contents of these works are nothing but secular. Breloer quotes with approval the historically unfounded and anthropologically fallacious remark of Emil Sénart evidently from the latter's *Les Castes dans l'Inde* to the effect that "the ancient Indians did not at all know any state," because the state was extremely dependent on the society.³² According to Breloer the "statal organization could hardly be recognised beside the society" and the state was simply the protector of the social order. From this is said to follow the doctrine of *dharma* being above or going before *artha*. The state is alleged to be in no way contained in the society but to stay apart from and opposed to it.

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³² Vol. III. pp. 68-70.

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Both Sénart and Breloer have managed to ignore the *daṇḍa*, the punishment, the "sanction," which keeps the castes or the social orders each to its *svadharma* or discharge of one's own duties. And the *daṇḍa* is wielded by the state through its executive, the King. The Hindu theory of state is based on the *dictum*, no *daṇḍa*, no *dharma*, i.e., no king, no society. It is the state that is personified in the king as one of its seven limbs. In other words, the right attitude in regard to Hindu politics would consist in admitting that there is no society, morality, duty etc., possible without state. The state is the "cause" of social order.³³

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³³ See "The Hindu Theory of Property, Law and Social Order" in B. K. Sarkar, *The Political Institutions*, etc. (1922).

c11.s7.8

In regard to the theories of Hindu politics Breloer has not been able to go beyond the conventional. Be it observed *en passant* that Hillebrandt's *Altindische Politik* (Jena 1923) tried to introduce German indology to some fruitful ideas in the field of Hindu polity and is well calculated to counteract the traditional orientalism in so far as it is manifest in Breloer.

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As Breloer has been attempting an analytical and objective excavation into the *Arthaśāstra* and allied works from far and near it should perhaps be deemed reasonable to try to discover the theories of the Hindu state and society on the basis of the new facts that are being unearthed. In the mean time it is not prudent to make uncritical use of the ready-made theories of the last generation of indologists, for they may need to be modified in the light of the new data.

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