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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c6.s3: Universality and Relativity of Śukranīti

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c6.s3

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Universality and Relativity of Śukranīti

c6.s3.1

Be this as it may, it is possible to doubt at the outset if the class of writings called *Dharmaśāstras*, *Arthaśāstras*, and *Nītiśāstras* to which *Śukranīti* belongs (1) were the work of a single individual or school, and (2) were ever the Gazetteers designed to embody the actual state of things, or Statute-Books meant for the guidance of the people and rulers, of any particular epoch or region. It may be presumed that like Plato's *Republic* and *Laws*, More's *Utopia*, and Harrington's *Oceana*, *Śukranīti* is the product of the same inspiration that has lain at the bottom of all efforts to portray the ideal constitution of "nowhere", describing things 'that never were on sea or land' in the history of the world's speculative literature. Thus about *Manu Saṁhitā*, Elphinstone remarks in his *History of India* (1889, p. 12): "We must remember that a code is never the work of a single age, some of the earliest and rudest laws being preserved and incorporated with the improvements of the most enlightened times. \* \* Even if the whole code referred to one period it would not show the real state of manners. Its injunctions are drawn from the model to which it is wished to raise the community, and prohibitions from the worst state of crime which it was possible to apprehend. \* \* \* Though early adopted as an unquestionable authority for the law, I should scarcely venture to regard it as a code drawn up for the regulation of a particular state under the sanction of a government. It seems rather to be the work of a learned man, designed to set forth his ideas of a perfect commonwealth under Hindu institutions."

c6.s3.2

According to this view it may be inappropriate to trace the production of *Śukranīti* to the patronage or influence of any of the numerous polities and royal courts in Hindu India. But even the most idealistic literature is not absolutely independent of age and clime. The time-spirit and place-spirit are too powerful to be totally ignored by human genius even if it should consciously attempt this. We may ignore in this connection the monistic "regionalism" or geographical "interpretation" of history as developed by Demolins, who carried to extreme lengths the somewhat radical ideas of Le Play. But there is no difficulty in accepting the more reasonable views of Brunhes as developed in *La Géographie Humaine* or of Worms in *La Sociologie*⁵ in regard to the influence of place on man's activities. Thurnwald's *Die Gestaltung der Wirtschaftsentwicklung aus ihren Anfängen heraus* also can be depended upon as a sober treatment of the place-factor in economic and other human achievements. The social environment and physical surroundings,—both the aspects of the great envelope of man,—cannot but leave their marks upon his intellectual consciousness and literary activities of any considerable magnitude.

c6.s3.3

⁵ R. Worms: *La Sociologie* (Paris 1926), pp. 66-67. A generally acceptable position in regard to the influence of region is that of C. Vallaux: *Le Sol et l'état* (Paris 1911).

c6.s3.4

Leaving aside for the present, therefore, the most vexed of all questions in Indian history, the determination of the personality, identity and individuality of our author, we propose to investigate the physical and social influences that are likely to have contributed to the *Gestalt* or form of *Śukranīti*, as available from a study of the data furnished by it. This investigation is really a study of the education received by our author himself, and of the literature drawn upon by him in the preparation of his work, in one word, a presentation of the whole culture embodied in, and pre-supposed by, *Śukranīti*. A study of this culture and the "relativity" of *Śukranīti* to this *milieu* of physical and social forces and influences, would, however, incidentally furnish some of the evidences pointing to the age and *locale* of the work.

c6.s3.5

The relativity of *Śukranīti* to the social influences may be easily presumed like that of *Manu Saṁhitā* as has been done by Elphinstone. "It is evident that it incorporates the existing laws", says he, "and any alterations it may have introduced with a view to bring them up to its preconceived standard of perfection, must still have been drawn from the opinions which prevailed when it was written." So also the influence of physical and geographical factors on the work, and consequently its "relativity" to a particular region of the earth's surface cannot be missed.

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