The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c6.s3.1

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."