The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t4.36

c14.s9.t4.36

Ain 72 describes the "manner in which His Majesty spends his time" (pp. 153-156). In such expressions as the "care with which His Majesty guards over his motives and watches over his emotions," "he listens to great and small," "he does not allow his desires or his wrath to renounce allegiance to wisdom," "his august nature cares but little for the pleasures of the world," etc. one may read the echoes or reminiscences of the "qualifications" and "vices" of kings with which the Hindu *artha* and *nītiśāstras* deal as a matter of course. Some of these virtues are of course but generalities and platitudes found in every treatise on ideal polity from Plato and Kauṭalya to Al-Farabi (c. 950), the great Arab encyclopaedist who based his *Al-Madinat-al-Fadila* (*Model City*) on Plato. Abul Fazl does not therefore have to copy such maxims from any specifically Hindu sources.