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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15: Chapter XII. Hindu Philosophy's Contributions to Positivism

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15

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English

Contents

Chapter XII. Hindu Philosophy's Contributions to Positivism

The "Sensate" and the "Ideational"

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In Eur-America it has been the tradition of scholarship for historians of philosophy to devote attention to political, economic, social and legal speculations along with the speculations on man, nature, knowledge, mind, truth, beauty, good, God, etc. No account of Greek philosophy is held to be complete which overlooks the contributions of the Greek moralists or philosophers to political or social thought. Similarly in the studies relating to the beginnings of "modern" philosophy, say, the philosophy of Herder, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, etc. the politics, economics, jurisprudence and sociology of the thinkers in question and of their contemporaries are accorded an appropriate place. To mention a few works published in the nineteenth century, interest in political philosophy is manifest as much in Victor Cousin's *Histoire de la philosophie*, Lewes's *Biographical History of Philosophy*, and Zeller's *Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie* as in Leslie Stephen's *English Thought in the Nineteenth Century*, Merz's *History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century* and Lévy-Bruhl's *Histoire de la philosophie moderne en France*. And in treatises like Janet's *Histoire de la science politique dans ses relations avec la morale* or Bonar's *Philosophy and Political Economy* one can detect the attempts to bring economics and politics into contact with general philosophy.

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In the field of indology, however, scholars both Indian and non-Indian, have up till now as a rule fought shy of economics, politics, law, or sociology in their studies relating to the history of Hindu philosophy. Works dealing with the ideas of ancient or medieval Indian thinkers on body, mind, soul, universe, reasoning, intuition, meditation etc. have been systematically practising non-co-operation with the Hindu ideas of property, state, society and law, as well as of fine arts, crafts, industries and so forth such as form the subject matter of *vārttā*, *śilpa* and *vāstu śāstras*. The absence of the comprehensive treatment of Hindu philosophy is one of the main reasons for one-sided and therefore fallacious and misleading interpretation of the Hindu mind and its creations. No survey of Hindu civilization or culture-history can be adequate which ignores or is indifferent to the achievements of the Indian people in political, economic and social institutions as well as political, economic and social thought.¹ Those modern treatises dealing with Hindu philosophy which have bestowed attention on, say, *mokṣa* (salvation) to the exclusion of the other three categories in the philosophical *chaturvarga* (*quadrivium*) of *puruṣārtha* (the desirables of man), namely, *dharma* (law, duty, *mores*), *artha* (economico-political interests), and *kāma* (sex-life) can but furnish partial, to say the least, unjust and erroneous pictures about Hindu thought and institutions.

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¹ The contributions of Hindu philosophy to political categories were first discussed by the present author in the *American Political Science Review* (November 1918, August 1919), the *Political Science Quarterly* (New York, December 1918, March 1921), the *International Journal of Ethics* (Chicago, April 1920), *Revue de Synthèse Historique* (Paris, August-December 1920), *Séances et Travaux de l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques* (Paris, August, 1921) and the *Deutsche Rundschau* (Berlin, March 1922).

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'An observation in Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynamics*,² just published, deserves some comment in this connection. Referring to materialism in Hindu thought he observes as follows: "Almost all the Indian and European investigators of the problem (like M. Müller, L. de la Vallée Poussin, R. Garbe, Rhys Davids and many others) unanimously stress that the materialistic thought never gained any important place in the literature of India, except in the legendary, pre-Aryan period, before 2000 to 4000 B. C. of which nothing is known and which did not have as yet the Vedic culture, nor crystallized into a real school of thought, nor if it existed as such had any great influence."

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² Vol. II. (New York 1937), pp. 57-58.

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This statement presents in a nutshell the philosophy of traditional indology as popularized by Max Müller and his successors until today. And it is to furnish correctives to this kind of indological researches that the first volume of the *Positive Background of Hindu Sociology* was published during 1912-1914. The ideas of the *Positive Background* have had some impacts on subsequent indology as described *supra* pp. 27-49 of the present work. It has been pointed out also (pp. 49-51) that traditional indology is not altogether defunct but is surviving in a palpable manner. In so far as Sorokin has considered it worth while to depend on traditional indology in his interpretations of world-culture his encyclopædic three-volume work referred to above is to that extent to be appraised as another specimen of this survival.

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It is to be observed, however, as noted in pp. 27-36, that some of his previous works, for instance, *Social Mobi-* lity and *Contemporary Sociological Theories* are “immensely calculated to militate against the methodology as established by Max Müller, Sénart and Max Weber.”

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The fallacy of the Max Müller school of indology has already been discussed in other places (pp. 17-23). The first chapter of the *Futurism of Young Asia*, referred to there may be mentioned over again. It should be observed, further, that traditional indology, *in so far as it has at all cared to study Hindu materialism*, has, in the first place, tried to search for it in those documents, — “ideational”, to use Sorokin’s expression, — where materialism is hardly to be found. And in the second place, it has as a rule systematically overlooked, ignored or minimized just those tons of documents which constitute nothing but materialism, pure and undefiled. Traditional indology has ever been supremely indifferent to and has systematically exhibited a lack of interest in the “positivistic strands of Hindu literature”, such as those referred to, for instance, in pp. 12-13.

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Another point deserves emphasis. Even in those documents where materialism is not likely to be much in evidence, the materialistic (“sensate”) basis of some of the non-materialistic (“ideational”) speculations cannot by any means be ignored. The *Sānkhya-Vaiśeṣika*, the *Nyāya* and the *Āyurvedic* foundations of Hindu thought constitute the permanent background of materialism in Indian philosophy.³

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³ See the chapter on “The Philosophical Foundations of Sukra’s Materialism” in the *Positive Background* (first edition) Vol. II. (1926), or the section on the “Anti-idealistic Systems of Indian Philosophy in their Bearings on Economics and Politics” in the present author’s *Creative India* (Lahore 1937), pp. 46-60.

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Interpretations based on the cultivation of blindness to these and allied considerations can have but one result. And that is what Sorokin has described in the passage quoted above.

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In the estimation of Sorokin's indologists as well as the philosophers and sociologists dependent on such indologists materialism "never gained any important place in the literature of India", "nor had any great influence", "had a comparatively unimportant place in the philosophic thought of India", "hardly ever became a strong or dominant force", and has been "uninfluential in Hindu thought throughout the three thousand years". But those scholars who are not obsessed by the prejudices of colonialism and Orientalism as described in the *Futurism of Young Asia* and are prepared to study materialism ("sensatism") in those Hindu documents (*kāma*, *dharma*, *artha*, *nīti*, *vārttā*, *śilpa*, *vāstu* and allied literature) where materiaism is naturally to be expected, as for instance, in the main body of the present work will have to be forced to the conclusion that materialism first, materialism second, and materialism always has been the foundation and the background of Hindu civilization for six thousand years from Mohenjo Daro to the age of Rāmakriṣṇa-Vivekānanda.

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The present work will serve to indicate that it is not necessary to be specially non-Brahmanic, anti-Hindu, socialistic or Marxistic, as hinted at by Sorokin, in order to be convinced of the "sensatism", positivism or materialistic strands of Indian culture through the ages. Nor should it be necessary to employ a psychological or sociological microscope in order to detect the traces of positivism, few and far between, in some of the alleged "periods of transition or crisis" in Indian history. Hindu positivism or sensatism does not require any special pleading. Every student of the cultural and sociological realities will find that in every epoch and in every region positivism has furnished the very foundations of Indian creativeness and *élan de la vie*. It is not possible here to go over again the entire ground of the three volumes of the *Positive Background*.

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Sorokin has referred to some recent Indian authors of the history of old Indian philosophy. But the fact that these authors happen to be Indian does not improve the situation. They belong to traditional indology in so far as they commit the same fallacies of mal-observation and non-observation as the Western pioneers. As a rule, they are as indifferent to the materialistic sources as the founders of traditional indology. To them as to the Western writers on Indian philosophy the dozens of Chandraguptas, Rājendra Cholas, Bukkā Rāyas, Śivājis and other Indian Napoleons are non-entities and their literary or archaeological documents mere shadows worthy but to be ignored. Like the Western indologists, again, these Indian authors have the knack of treating perhaps as inconvenient exceptions the thousand and one wars of Indian history as well as the million instances of sensuality, luxury, corruption and what not prevailing in the societies of India as of Europe through the ages. And the vast literature bearing on blood-shed, sex-life, economic prosperity, domestic bliss and so forth is apparently considered by these authors as by their Western colleagues to be of hardly any worth by the side of the texts bearing on *ahimsā* (non-killing) and *mokṣa* (salvation). In their sociological or philosophical interpretations of culture they are no less apathetic to the anthropological, economic, militaristic, historical and other objective realities of life as the Western interpreters. Both care to study a very small part of India's life and thought, institutions, activities and movements and exclude the major portions from their survey. And yet both talk glibly of the "Hindu view of life," "Indian ideals, "the heart of Hindustan," the spirit of India, etc.⁴ These Indian authors are as obsessed by monistic interpretations of culture as their Eur-American *gurus*.

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⁴ Contrast B. K. Sarkar: "The Hindu View of Life" (*Open Court*, Chicago, August 1919) and *Die Lebensanschauung des Inders* (Leipzig 1923).

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Besides, Indian writers of the history of Indian philosophical thought labour under a peculiar misconception. They are generally prone to believing that old Indian philosophy was *higher than* or *superior to* the philosophies of the West, ancient, medieval and modern. As a rule, they believe also that this superiority consists in being non-materialistic and anti-materialistic. It is for them almost a part of life's *credo*, therefore, to accentuate the non-materialistic aspects of some of the Indian texts. At the same time they make it a point to cultivate a thorough-going blindness, at any rate academically, to all the million facts and ideas of materialism in the actual life and thought of the Indians through the millenniums.

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Both the Eur-American and Indian indologists or orientalists require to get used to the "whole view" of man, the principles of human personality and characterology as well as societal origins and development. It is necessary for both these classes of scholars to get "depolarized" from their personal or professional tastes, ideals, horrors and prejudices. They have but to open their eyes and see the manifold manifestations of life, although they may care to single out just a few for their own investigations. As soon as these orientalists as well as their followers in the philosophical and sociological fields have mastered the elementary fact that the foundations of life are by nature and history no less positivistic than transcendental or no less idealistic than materialistic it will be impossible for them or, for that matter, any set of intellectuals anywhere on earth not to believe that materialism, positivism, "sensatism," or any other ism of this sort has been fundamental in India's creations in personalities, institutions, ideologies and movements.

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The best that can be said about all writers of the history of philosophy is that they are correct translators, paraphrasers or summarizes of old "philosophical" texts. But unless they are at the same time interested in and have devoted considerable attention to the thousand and one others items of life it cannot be safe for any scholar dealing with the *Gestalt* of culture and the trends as well as fluctuations of civilization to use them as authorities for data or interpretation. Such historians of philosophy, in so far as they are correct translators or objective summarizers, may perhaps be quite good so far as their own data, circumscribed as they happen to be, are concerned. But they require to be appraised, supplemented, and modified by evidences from the "thousand and one" other sources. One can simply be misled if interpretations by historians of philosophy, such as have not cared to study the other interests of life, about the "view of life," "ideals of culture," "spirit of civilization" etc., based as they are on very limited sources, are accepted as the chief or exclusive evidences for dissertations about the life-history of whole regions, nay, entire subcontinents not only for decades and generations, but even for centuries and millenniums. In regard to the sensate aspects of the Indian peoples Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynamics* has been shunted off the tracks of dependable sociology or philosophical and comparative culture-history because he has given undue importance to the translators of a particular type of texts in the extensive domain of Indian philosophy. He has thereby virtually depended on those authors who have the least to say about sensatism, or who are professionally or intellectually incapable of doing justice to sensatism *vis-à-vis* ideationalism, especially when it is a question affecting Indian culture.

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The extent to which Sorokin's interpretation of Hindu sensatism has been shunted off the reasonable position may be gauged from the following statement:⁵ "Even in such seemingly purely secular works as the great Hindu treatise on politics, the *Arthaśāstra* ascribed to Kauṭilya we do not find a purely secular, empirical and morally cynical standpoint so pronounced as in many Western works beginning with Machiavelli's *Prince*. The standpoint of the *Arthaśāstra* is sensatism mitigated by pure ideationalism; that is, it is idealistically rationalistic in its epistemology as well as in its ethics and politics."

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⁵ Vol. II. (1937), p. 59.

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In the present context there is space enough only to observe that the correct position is just the opposite. The *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭalya is not a "seemingly purely secular work." It is a hundred per cent secular work, and a secular work with vengeance. As for Machiavelli's *Prince*, one will have to be precise in explaining exactly what one means by attaching such expressions as “morally cynical standpoint” etc. to the Italian statesman-philosopher. *En passant*, it is to be recalled that Machiavelli was the author not only of *Prince* but of *Discourses on the First Ten Years of Livy's History of Rome* and other works as well. The morals of Machiavelli can be interpreted in other ways too, as, for instance, in J. N. Figgis's *From Gerson to Grotius*.⁶ In Figgis's way of looking at things the “moral cynicism” of Machiavelli should appear to be quite a decent and respectable item in human relations.

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⁶ Cambridge, 1907, pp. 99-101.

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In any case, such expressions as “morally cynical standpoint” as well as phrases like “purely secular, empirical” etc. can be applied with the same force not only to the work of Kauṭalya but to the entire range of Hindu economic, legal and political literature. One has only to examine objectively the contents of these documents without the conventional notions imported from the specialists in the history of Indian ideationalism. It is worth observing that the equations between Machiavelli, Hobbes and Hindu political philosophy in regard to the categories more or less identical with those employed by Sorokin, have been established in the Italian scholar Carlo Formichi's *Salus Populi: Sggio di Scienza Politica* (Torino 1908). More damaging for the thesis of Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynamics*, in so far as the Indian topics are concerned, is the work by another Italian scholar, G. B. Bottazzi, entitled *Precursori di Niccolo Machiavelli in India ed in Grecia* (Pisa 1914). Bottazzi establishes an equation between Machiavelli on the one side and Kauṭalya the Hindu and Thucydides the Greek on the other. And of course it is clear that Kauṭalya preceded Machiavelli in Machiavellism,⁷ whatever it may mean.

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⁷ See B. K. Sarkar: "Hindu Politics in Italian" in four numbers of the *Indian Historical Quarterly* (Calcutta, 1925-26). It is accessible conveniently in his *Positive Background* (Allahabad) Vol. II (1926), where *Machiavellism, oriental and occidental*, has been discussed at length.

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Further, nobody who has handled the texts of Machiavelli can afford to ignore the "ideational" ethics and psychology etc. which Sorokin considers to be characteristic of Kauṭalya. The princes have been taught by Machiavelli in his *Discourses* (III, V) to believe that "from the hour they violate those laws, customs and usages under which men have lived for a great while, they begin to weaken the foundations of their authority." In the *Prince* (ch. XVIII) Machiavelli observes that nothing renders the ruler more contemptible than violence on the property and women of the subjects. The same chapter teaches that there are two methods of combat, the one by law, and the other by force. The first is declared by Machiavelli to be proper to men, and the second to beasts. In case it were necessary to coin a category like "sensatism mitigated by ideationalism" in order to understand Kauṭalya the same category might be employed generically and almost indifferently for the morals, manners and sentiments of Machiavelli.

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In the domain of Indian art likewise Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynamics*⁸ finds "all the ideational traits" and has nothing to say about the presence or otherwise of sensatism. His analysis or rather observation is based on extracts from two authors. It is necessary to point out that the two authors do not make identical observations. One of Sorokin's authorities says that the "Hindu view of art is the Hindu view of life, life as interpreted by religion and philosophy." The lengthy quotation is but an elucidation of this statement. But Sorokin's other authority makes a distinction between the "epochs" of Hindu art and attaches different values to different epochs. He makes it clear that "European art is of two "very different kinds, one Christian and scholastic, the other post-Renaissance and personal." According to this authority "there was a time when Europe and Asia could and did actually understand each other very well." Whatever be the difference between these two authorities they are both believers in the idealistic or transcendental and mystical foundation of Indian art, and both apparently ignore the objective, secular and social inspirations of Hindu artists. In other words, both belong to the traditional indology. Sorokin's sociology of Hindu art, unsuspicious as it is of any other indology and unacquainted as it appears to be with any specimens of Indian sculptures and paintings through the centuries, declares itself in the manner of deductive and formal logic as follows: "The dominant mentality of the Hindu culture has been ideational. Logically, we must expect its art to have been ideational also."

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⁸ Vol. I. (1937), pp. 282-284.

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Those who care to cultivate a direct contact with the images, sculptures, frescoes and *bas-reliefs* without the metaphysics of the "knower and the known, seer and seen meeting in an act that transcends distinction" will find that the creations of Hindu artists have very often been not only sensate but sensuous and sensual as well. Material life in all its forms, the vital impulses of all sorts and denominations, not only the nine *rasas* (tastes, flavours or emotions) of Indian psychology but the manifold emotions and sentiments known to the modern psychological laboratories have all been rendered in stone, bronze, terracotta, wood etc. in the most graphic and realistic manner by Hindu artists of all regions and ages. If men and women, unsophisticated by the touch of traditional Indology, view the objective delineations of plants and animal life, human figure, genre scenes and so forth by Hindu artists and craftsmen they will realize at the first sight that these works are "human, all too human."⁹ They are not likely to be misled into the thought that these works are generally the creations of persons to whom "everything has a divine meaning and no element of life is treated for its own sake."

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⁹ B. K. Sarkar: *Hindu Art Its Humanism and Modernism* (New York 1920), chapter on "Viewpoints in Aesthetics" in the *Futurism of Young Asia* (Berlin 1922), and "Social Philosophy in Aesthetics" (*Rupam*, Calcutta, 1924).

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In the same key has been composed practically everything that Sorokin has to say about the Indian culture-systems. "India is the country,"¹⁰ we are told, "whose socio-political regime and aristocracy have been the decentralized theocracy par excellence." Quotations about the Hindu castes, *dharma*, and especially about the Brāhmaṇas have been offered in order to "corroborate" this thesis. The treatment is conventional. It is to be noted, further, that in this instance as in others there is hardly any logical distinction between the statement and the alleged "corroboration," because the statement has not been advanced on the strength of any inductive study or analysis of factual data. The quotations alone constitute virtually both the statement or the thesis as well as the corroboration.

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¹⁰ *Social and Cultural Dynamics*, Vol. III (New York, 1937), pp. 141-143. On castes, Brahmans, theocracy, *dharma*, etc. contrast B. K. Sarkar: "The Theory of Property, Law and Social Order in Hindu Political Philosophy" (*International Journal of Ethics*, April, 1920), "Gilde di mestier e gilde mercantili nell' India Antica" (*Giornale degli Economisti e Rivista di Statistica*, Rome, April 1920) and "Die Struktur des Volkes in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Lehre der Schukraniti (*Kölner Vierteljahrshefte für Soziologie*, Cologne, XI. 1, 1932).

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The impact of traditional indology on Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynasties*¹¹ is indeed very strongly manifest in his ideas about social and political relations. Bouglé's *Note sur le droit et la caste en Inde* published in *L'Année Sociologique* (Paris) of 1906 has been accepted by Sorokin as the key to his interpretations of Hindu polity. According to Bouglé, as Sorokin cites, "*une organisation proprement politique n'a pas été donnée la société hindoue*" (a properly political organisation was not given to the Hindu society). Other statements of Bouglé are quoted by Sorokin with approval, for instance, the following: "In India there is no embryo of the state. The very idea of the state public power is entirely foreign to India." On the strength of this kind of indology Sorokin has delivered a sociology like the following about the Hindu states. "These states," says he, "were either theocratic or mostly organized by foreign invaders."

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¹¹ Vol. III. pp. 193-194. Contrast B. K. Sarkar: "La Théorie de la constitution dans la philosophie politique hindoue" (*Revue de Synthèse Historique* Paris, August 1920), "La Démocratie hindoue" (*Séances et Travaux de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques*, Paris, July-August, 1921), "Aspects économiques et politiques de la civilisation hindoue" (*Revue de Synthèse Historique*, Paris 1930) and "La Sociographie hindoue aux débuts du capitalisme moderne" (*Revue Internationale de Sociologie*, Paris, February 1937).

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Acquaintance with the factual Hindu institutions of public or private law would lead to the thoroughly opposite point of view. Theocracy as a category is very well-known in social science, and the first proposition that one should be warranted to make about Hindu states is that as a rule they are the farthest removed from theocracy. As for the alleged "foreign invaders" "mostly" organizing Hindu states, the statistician of diplomatic, military and political history would be at his wit's end if he were called upon to explain, not to speak of corroborating his proposition.

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In any case, the number of foreign invaders organizing states among the Europeans was not less, epoch by epoch, than that of foreign invaders organizing states in the Indian sub-continent. The comparative statistics of one people governing another people with reference to the East and the West would be very interesting in this regard. For, instance, there were periods when, as Yule observes in the *Travels of Marco Polo*, "in Eastern Europe scarcely a dog could bark without Mongol leave from the borders of Poland and the Gulf of Scanderoon to the Amur and the Yellow Sea." Freeman's *Historical Geography of Europe* should also prove to be a permanent eye-opener in regard to foreign dominations among the European races of all ages.

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The invasions of the medieval Saracens or Arabs in Southern and South-western Europe are equal historical facts about foreigners "organizing" states in Europe. Then there are the Ottoman Turks whose exploits in South-Eastern Europe ushered in modern history. The neighbourhoods of Vienna and Venice in the heart of Europe furnished on several occasions the boundary posts, as it were, of Western Asia in those days. Once these data of "foreign invaders organizing states" in medieval and modern Europe¹² are assimilated for a system of social and cultural dynamics the question of sensatism *vis-à-vis* ideationalism in India would acquire a fresh valuation in the light of comparative sensatism or comparative ideationalism.

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¹² Howorth: *History of the Mongols* (London, 1876-88), Vol. I. pp. ix-xi, Vol. II, pp. xl-xliii, P. Scott: *History of the Moorish Empire in Europe* (Philadelphia 1904), Vol. II, pp. 35-37, *Cambridge Mediaeval History*, Vol. II. (1913), pp. 379-385, G. F. Young: *East and West through Fifteen Centuries*, Vol. II (London 1916), pp. 131-137, 567-570, H. Barnes: *History of Western Civilization* (New York, 1935), Vol. I. pp. 524-526, 547-548, 549-550.

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So far as the systems of truth and movement of discoveries and inventions are concerned, Sorokin's *Social and Culture Dynamics*¹³ makes a distinction between the "truth of faith" and the "sensate truth." "Great discoveries in mathematics, astronomy, and other natural sciences," we are told, "were made in India but they were probably made in the periods of the relative weakening of truth of faith or by partisans of the truth of reason and senses. Even so, the discoveries cannot even remotely compete with those of the Western world for the last four centuries." Sorokin does not specify the discoveries of the Hindus. But the student of the scientific contributions of Hindu culture is aware that these can be proven to have been growing for ages since the Vedic, nay, as we should now say, the Mohenjo Daro times. Indian history is generally known to be very poor in records and dates. And yet there is hardly any period which did not have its exact, natural, positive or sensate sciences. In that case, "the partisans of the truth of reason and senses" will have to be admitted as having been playing their rôle in a constant manner through the social and cultural dynamics of India. The partisans of the truth of faith, mystics, idealists and so forth were not evidently bossing the culture-world of India and crushing the sensatists out of existence all the time. Sorokin's further proposition to the effect that the "predominantly ideational mentality and system of truth of India contribute little to the increase of discoveries and inventions" is, in any case, inconsistent with his previous statement.

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¹³ Vol. II (1937) p. 145.

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We can easily admit that the Hindu discoveries down, say, to the fourteenth or sixteenth century A.C. "cannot even remotely compete with those of the Western world for the last four centuries." But we have to admit at the same time the other position, namely, that European discoveries down to the same period "cannot even remotely compete" with the European discoveries for the last four centuries. Under these conditions of comparative scientific development the problem of sensatism *vs.* ideationalism in Hindu culture, or for that matter, in European culture as well acquires an altogether new orientation¹⁴ such as does not appear to have been hinted at or adequately taken cognisance of in Sorokin's synthesis.

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¹⁴ B. K. Sarkar: *Hindu Achievements in Exact Science* (New York, 1918).

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In *Social and Cultural Dynamics* the categories, "sensate" and "ideational," have been employed as logical dichotomies in the most abstract manner conceivable. Sorokin has not failed, however, to suggest a mixed category. But in the application of these categories to the ideological or institutional data of historic culture-systems he appears to have postulated certain regions or races and epochs as embodying the one or the other category. After having accepted these postulates he quotes certain passages from certain scholars in regard to the regions or races and the ages. And then he believes he has "corroborated" his thesis. The proper method should be entirely the reverse. The data, both institutional and ideological, ought to be presented in the first instance. Then should come the interpretations. It is self-evident that many persons, regions, groups or ages that are interpreted as "sensate" in one manner may be proven to be quite "ideational" in another, and *vice versa*. Be this as it may, it is in the last instance that one is entitled to come forward with the discovery that such and such a region or epoch is sensate, such and such a region or epoch is ideational, and so on. In regard to Hindu culture, for instance, what the world of science wants to know is not the hypothesis or the postulate about its sensatism or ideationalism or a mixture of the two isms but the proof, objective and realistic, that it is really characterized by the one or the other, especially when the traditional and conventional indology has been under challenge for over two decades. Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynamics* has not cared to furnish the proofs by giving a comparative analysis of the Eastern and the Western institutions or ideas. It has given his postulates and then the quotations from a few authors and finally what he calls his corroborations.

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Be it observed that the analytical studies of Sorokin as embodied in the *Sociology of Revolution* (1925), *Social Mobility* (1927) and *Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology* (1929)¹⁵ are devoid of metaphysical one-sidedness and determinism of any sort in the interpretation of "functional" and causal relations. In *Contemporary Sociological Theories* (1928) also he developed an apparatus of critical judgment which is eminently calculated to overthrow monistic interpretations in every field of societal investigation. Every statement that he has made or rather accepted in his historical work, *Social and Cultural Dynamics* (1937), about Indian culture in regard to the relations between the sensate and the ideational ought, therefore, to be combated by himself with the aid of the methodology and conclusions established in his previous works.

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¹⁵ With C. C. Zimmerman as part-author.

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The "whole view" of the data of Indian social and cultural dynamics ought to be exhibited. It is to be observed that ideologies, pious wishes and dreams alone do not constitute society and culture. Objective institutions, historical realities and actual events in inter-human relations have a right also to be heard. As for the ideologies, again, it is not enough to handle exclusively the alleged holy texts in the *Sacred Books of the East Series* and exhibit the conventional interpretations of them as popularized by traditional orientalists. In any case, it ought not to be reasonable to pounce upon some of the most mystical-looking pronouncements in these texts as the most characteristic for India and reject, overlook or ignore the thousand and one humane, rational and realistic passages that constitute the core of this literature. The whole view, so far as these ideologies are concerned, would consist in envisaging the literary documents, as has been very often observed in the preceding pages, of entire *chaturvarga* (the four desirables of man), namely, *dharma*, *artha*, *kāma* and *mokṣa*. This would require, further, a thoroughly critical attitude in regard to the dissertations of those scholars who deal exclusively with the ideational documents of Hindu philosophy, in order that the student of scientific social investigations may not fall a victim to whatever anybody in Eur-America or India may choose to call the "Hindu view of life," the *Eigenart des indischen Denkens*, and so forth. As soon as the socio-cultural data are presented in their entirety and comprehensiveness and the correct methodology (as, for instance, that of Sorokin's analytical sociology in the works of 1925-29 referred to above) applied to their elucidation and interpretation, the "new indology" for which the present author has been raising his cry since 1912-14 is bound to appear automatically, and Hindu sensatism would be taken as a first postulate of every philosophical, sociological and culture-historical inquiry.

The Geometry of "Between-Men" Relations in the Dharma and Artha Śāstras

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Coming now towards the end of the present survey we have to observe that the specialized treatises or *śāstras*¹ on politics, economics and sociology in Hindu literature are numerous. To be very brief, they are to be encountered, generally speaking, under two groups: (1) *dharma* (and *smriti*) *śāstras* and (2) *artha* (and *nīti*) *śāstras*. As a full-fledged treatise, the oldest *dharmaśāstra* is perhaps the *Dharmasūtra* of Gautama (c 550 B.C. ?), and the oldest *arthaśāstra* perhaps that associated with the name of Kauṭalya (c 330 B.C. ?). Excluding the vernacular and English paraphrases or translations of the old Sanskrit treatises in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the last *smritiśāstra* of the Hindu tradition is perhaps the commentary on Vijnāneśvara's *Mitākṣarā* by the Maratha jurist Bālambhaṭṭa (1740-1830 ?) or the Bengali jurist Jagannātha Tarkapanchānana's (1695-1806 ?) *Vivāda-bhangārṇava*. And in the line of *nītiśāstras* the last work is perhaps the *Rājanīti*² in Marathi language (c 1810) based on Sanskrit texts by the Maratha scholar Malhār Rām Rāo Chitnis.

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¹ P. V. Kane: *History of Dharmaśāstras* (Poona) Vol. I. (1931) J. J. Meyer: *Ueber das Wesen der altindischen Rechtsschriften und ihr Verhältnis zu einander und zu Kauṭilya* (Leipzig 1927). See also *supra*, pp. 354-361 (Kauṭalya and His Boswell).

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² Edited by K. N. Sane for the *Kāvyetihāsa Samgraha Series* No. 23, (Poona, 1887).

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We have to face here a lilterature which has a more or less continuous history of nearly two thousand five hundred years. And this literature from beginning to end is essentially "analytical" in its contents. The Hindu speculations have given rise to a number of categories and we find that the philosophers are engaged in defining and analysing them. The topic may be constitutional, legal, economic, financial, social or international. But we notice that in the treatment by these authors one is led to feel that society, polity or economy is nothing but a system of relationships, contacts, *liaisons*, attitudes, dealings, *rapports*, *Beziehungen*. In the Hindu philosophy of *dharma*, *smriti*, *artha* or *nīti* mankind is presented in the form of an individual *vis-à-vis* individuals or groups, or of groups *vis-à-vis* groups or individuals. The stuff is essentially interhuman.

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Some of these attitudes, relations or contacts are described under the complex of *saptāmga*, the seven-limbed organism (*Kauṭaliya* VI. i, VIII, I, Viṣṇu III, 33, Śukra, I, lines 121-124, V, 1-2, Kāmandaka, 1, 16, IV, 1). Here we are presented with the theory of the constitution involving as it does the analysis of the *svāmī* (ruler), the *amātya* (minister or councillor), the *suhrit* (ally), the *koṣa* (treasure), the *rāṣṭra* (territory), the *durga* (fort) and the *vala* (army). The analysis of these seven categories is not the only topic of Hindu philosophy in political science. Then there are the problems, among others, of *aiśvarya* (sovereignty) which have also demanded the attention of the theorists. And here we encounter the Hindu theory of the state. In this analysis, likewise, the authors have given currency to a number of characteristic categories.

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The state (*rājya*) as an entity is grounded in the phenomenon of *aiśvarya* or *svāmitva*, i.e., sovereignty. The theory of the state, therefore, is fundamentally the philosophy of sovereignty. It may be exercised by the one or the few or the many. It may be vested in the long run in the legislature or the executive or the judiciary. It may be identical with the despotism of custom or the rule of positive law. It may manifest itself in and through a single organ as the *primum mobile* embracing all organized spheres or exhibited simultaneously in several co-existent co-ordinate corporations of the pluralistic universe. And finally, it may happen to be the monopoly of the bourgeoisie or of the proletariat. In any case, it is *aiśvarya* that ushers into being the phenomena called politics in societal existence. In political speculation the central problem obviously is the analysis of the great *śakti* (force) that constitutes the core of "political" relations, i.e., the *élan* of *samūha* (organized or collective) life.

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"What is sovereignty?" is then the moot question to be attacked by all political philosophers. The problem was grasped by the *dharma* (*smriti*) and *artha* (*nīti*) theorists of India also. It is to be remembered, however, that we are here concerned with the thought which prevailed in the world ages before the ideas discussed in Preuss's *Gemeinde, Staat und Reich als Gebietskörperschaften* (1889), Leory-Beaulieu's *L'Etat moderne et ses fonctions* (1890), Novicow's *Les Luttes entre sociétés humaines et leurs phases successives* (1893), Lecky's *Democracy and Liberty* (1896), Michel's *L'Idée de l'Etat* (1898), Merriam's *History of the Theory of Sovereignty since Rousseau* (1900), Scherger's *Evolution of Modern Liberty* (1904), Joseph-Barthélemy's *Rôle du pouvoir executif dans les républiques modernes* (1906), Duguit's *Le Droit social, le droit individuel et la transformation de l'état* (1908), Hobhouse's *Social Evolution and Political Theory* (1911), Barker's *Political Thought in England from Spencer to the Present Day* (1914), Lenin's *State and Revolution* (1917), Laski's *Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty* (1918), Joseph- Barthélemy's *Problème de la Compétence dans la démocratie* (1918), Watson's *State in Peace and War* (1919), Spann's *Der wahre Staat* (1921), Dewey's *Human Nature and Conduct* (1922), Van den Bruck: *Das dritte Reich* (1923), Hitler's *Mein Kampf* (1924), Sorokin's *Sociology of Revolution* (1925), Meinecke's *Idee der Staatsräson* (1925), Hocking's *Man and the State* (1926) and *The Spirit of World Politics* (1932), Redanò's *Le Stato Etico* (1927), Masaryk's *Making of a State* (1927), Karl Haushofer's *Geopolitik der Pan-Ideen* (1931) and *Raumüberwindende Mächte* (1934), Bouglé's *Socialismes Français* (1933), Köllreutter's *Grundriss der Allgemeinen Staatslehre* (1933), Lasbax's *La France ira-t-elle à un Troisième Empire?* (1934) and Del Vecchio's *Saggi Intorno allo Stato* (1935). The development of political philosophy in the world since the American war of independence and the first industrial revolution should as a rule be left out of the consideration while examining the categories of thought created by the Indian philosophers from Gautama and Kauṭalya to Jagannātha and Chitnis.

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The "analytical" treatment of political phenomena, bearing on the constitution or on sovereignty, is a prominent feature of Hindu thinking. The conviction is forced upon us under the guidance of the *dharma*-and the *artha-śāstras* that man in politics is fundamentally a bundle or complex of social or "between-men", i.e., interhuman relationships. These treatises do not seem to be interested in this or that particular state. Neither the Maurya Empire nor the Chola Empire nor indeed any state of Hindu history has engaged their attention. Their topic for discussion is the state *überhaupt*, i.e., the state as "the thing in itself," so to say. Be it observed that we are not attaching to this phrase any metaphysical implications. No treatment can be more objective, concrete and human than what we find in these works. To these authors a state is a human collectivity and therefore is nothing but a system of relations and orientations. Altogether, we are presented by the Hindu philosophers with the very pattern, form, geometry, so to say, of human relations. Whatever be the content of the state, howsoever varied be the races that constitute its membership, wheresoever located it be, the relations between the members of the state are taken as eternal. Examined in this light, the creations of the Hindu philosophers in and through the *dharma* and *artha śāstras* would appear to be fine logical contributions to what is being described as "pure," "analytical" or "formal" sociology in contemporary Eur-America.

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This kind of sociology is called by Leopold von Wiese,³ the leading exponent, as *die Lehre von den sozialen Beziehungen und den sozialen Gebilden*, i.e., the science of social relations or processes (competition, co-operation, exploitation etc.) and social "forms" (such as the group, mass, state, people, nation, class etc.). It is sometimes shortly named the *Beziehungslehre* or science of relations. And the special feature of this science of relations consists in the fact that it deals not with historical or time-conditioned categories but with the categories such as are "above" or indifferent to time (*überzeitlich*) and somewhat eternal (*quasiewig*). These categories relate to such relations or processes of "to" and "away" from (*Zu-und Auseinander*) as prevailed, are prevailing and will prevail as long as there are human beings.

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³ *Soziologie* (Berlin 1931) pp. 34, 47, 117, 120-124, 131-133.

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The formal sociology of the state cannot afford to remain a mere history of the state, as says von Wiese in his *System der Allgemeinen Soziologie*.⁴ Its function consists in "abstracting," scratching out (*herauslösung*) or isolating the "between-men" elements (*Zwischenmenschlichen*) out of the historico-empirical raw material. The items such as happen by accident to be the features of contemporary states, for instance, of the German state cannot according to him constitute its subject matter. In formal sociology are to be discussed the striking repetitions, similarities and rhythms etc. of all statal happenings or historical states. Its object is to analyze the common factors in all these social processes. And this is what has been done, along, of course, with other things, by the authors of the *dharma* and the *artha* or the *nīti śāstras*.

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⁴ Munich, 1933, p. 537.

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The social processes which specifically or peculiarly belong to the statal complex are characterized by von Wiese as consisting in *Herrschaft* (rule or domination) and *Dienst* (obedience or service).⁵ The relations between the superiors and the subordinates, the command, the nomination, the delegation, the status of officials, the protocol, the notification, the statute, the titles and so forth constitute the paraphernalia of statal relations. Among the numerous symbols of the state are noted the throne, the flag, the coat of arms, the uniforms, arms, office-buildings, the navy, the court of justice, and so on.

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⁵ *Ibid.*, pp. 548, 552.

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The contents⁶ of Somadeva's *Nītivākyāmrita*, Bhoja's *Yuktiḳalpataru*, Hemachandra's *Laghu Arhannīti*, Someśvara's *Mānasollāsa*, Chaṇḍeśvara's *Rājanīti-Ratnākara*, Vaiśampāyana's *Nītiprakāśikā*, Nīlakaṇṭha's *Nītimayūkha*, Mitra-Miśra's *Rājanīti-prakāśa* and Malhār Rām Rāo Chitnis's *Rājanīti* may be cited as instances of the "formal" analysis of the state-complex.

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⁶ *Supra*, pp. 422, 427-29, 431, 433-434, 516-518, 525, 546-548, 551-554.

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"Formal" or "analytical" sociology is claimed by von Wiese to be new and very recent. To a considerable extent the claim is well founded. Starting as analytical sociology did with Tönnies's *Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft* in 1887 it did not assume a definite form until the publication of Simmel's *Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung* (Sociology: Researches into the Forms of Society-making) in 1908. But in the present author's treatment the entire Hindu literature of *dharma*, *smriti*, *artha* and *nīti śāstras* is rich in the analysis of social forms and social relationships or processes and deals essentially with the between-men relations. In other words, the "new sociology" must have to be regarded, methodologically and in its rudimentary elements, at any rate, as very old, at least as old as Gautama and Kauṭalya, nay, much older still, because even Gautama and Kauṭalya had their predecessors in the establishment of the same geometry of social relations. And here it should be reasonable to agree with Sorokin⁷ who holds that its "founders were all law-givers who formulated the first rules of social relations, and especially all jurisconsults and theorizers of law." It should be admitted, however, at the outset that the analytical or formal discussions in the societal philosophies of the ancients and medievals of Eur-Asia cannot by any means be compared with the selfconscious and deliberate attempts at the promulgation of a new scientific discipline as represented by the Tönnies-Simmel-von Wiese group.

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⁷ *Contemporary Sociological Theories* (New York 1928) pp. 495-498.

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It will be noticed that, from the standpoint of content or substance, most of the categories of Hindu political philosophy have analogues in those of European and that it may be reasonable to connect even modern and contemporary theories with the findings of the old Hindus. In so far as political and social phenomena, or for that matter, all mental and moral or human phenomena are universal and eternal, it is possible to detect Platonic, Aristotelian, Patristic or Macchiavellian strands even in the philosophical discussions of contemporary problems. Besides, some of the economic and social institutions of today can be traced back to the Middle Ages for their crude and even semi-developed beginnings. It is from this angle of vision that we can appreciate the attempts of Sorokin's *Contemporary Sociological Theories* to trace virtually every "ism" of today back not only to medieval literary documents but to the most primitive records of human thought.

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But in a strictly scientific way of looking at things the theories that have grown around democracy and socialism, technocracy and world-economy, *le marché mondial*, constitutional liberty and class-struggle are essentially the products of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,—the epochs of the first and the second industrial revolutions. These phenomena were unknown as facts of "large dimensions" in the previous epochs.⁸ It would be psychologically untenable, therefore, to bring in the philosophies of Europe from, say, Plato's *Republic* to Frederick the Great's *Anti-Machiavel* (1736) and *Das Politische Testament* (1768) into the atmosphere of present-day ideologies. For instance, in so far as a "modern" thinker like Hobbes or Bossuet and a still more modern thinker like Hegel was unused to the grammar of trade unions, syndicates, class-struggle, international proletariat and so forth, the "absolutism" or monistic idealism that is associated with their political theories can hardly be invoked to interpret what may be described as the "neo-absolutism"⁹ of today, namely, that prevalent among the thinkers of Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. One must by no means overlook the very important consideration that it is on the generation-long experience of parliamentary liberties, labour organization, democratic procedure, and international camaraderies that the professedly anti-parliamentary, anti-democratic, anti-socialistic systems of neo-capitalistic *Duce*-states or *Führerstaaten*, i.e., leader-polities and dictatorships have been reared.

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⁸ On the question of modernistic economy in medieval Europe see H. Hauser: *Les Origines Historiques des Problèmes Economiques Actuels* (Paris 1930) pp. 3-9, *Les Débuts du Capitalisme* (Paris 1931), 16, 31, 42.

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⁹ B. K. Sarkar: "The People and the State in Neo-Democracy" (*Calcutta Review*, July, 1936).

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In Lasbax's *La France ira-t-elle à un Troisième Empire*¹⁰ we find an interesting analysis of imperialism. This is another political category, which, apparently unchanging, in reality embodies substantially diverse contents in different epochs. Imperialism may be taken as an eternal fact. But ancient imperialism was "single and universal", says he, whereas modern imperialism is *imperium dissocié en individualités nationales*, the imperialism of individual nations, i.e., neither single nor universal. The imperialism of the future is expected by Lasbax to bring back the "primitive unity" but in "a regime of the federation of all the peoples." It will be the "supreme imperialism of total peace."

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