The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t8.30

c14.s9.t8.30

In Rāmachandrapant's *Rājanīti* the protection of merchants is comprehensive enough to include foreign traders. Freedom of intercourse in trade should be given to sea-faring merchants at various ports by sending an assurance of safety, says he. In *dicta* like these we realize that the Marathi treatise on politics is not a mere paraphrase or adaptation of the Sanskrit *artha* and *nīti śāstras*. The protection of foreign merchants is not unknown in Kauṭalya. But the language and form in which the doctrine is enunciated by the Maratha writer are original. The fact that it is the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,—the *milieu* of European traders and mercantile houses,—is forced upon us in his treatment of the subject. Rāmachandrapant has enriched the scope of Hindu political science by introducing the *Topīkārs* (the hat-wearers, Europeans) as merchants and the relations of the state with them during peace and war. For instance, we are told that the punishment which is inflicted on the servants of the enemy is not to be meted out to the European merchants who happen to live in enemy territory. They may, however, be fined but discharged with due respect (p. 33).