The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s7.4

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.