The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15.s2.17

c15.s2.17

"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.