The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s17: The Diversity of the Nītiśāstras
The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s17
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The Diversity of the Nītiśāstras
c7.s17.1
To come back to the state-systems, these larger and more celebrated kingdoms and empires of the Hindus have flourished through over several thousand years of recorded history and in conditions of physical environment as varied as possible in a country like India, the ‘epitome of the world’. The types of political organization, therefore, that Indian history presents must be more or less diversified in character to meet the requirements of peoples living under diverse geographical and topographical influences. And one naturally expects a diversity of political philosophies or codes, *Nītiśāstras*, and manuals of governmental rules. In spite of the oneness and basic uniformity of Hindu life throughout India, the text-book of political life evolved in the extreme north, say Kāśmīr, is not likely to be that exactly adjusted to the needs of the Dravidians of the extreme south. Or, again, the rules and regulations which the Marathas framed for themselves in the South-west of India as champions of Hindu freedom against the Mussalmans could not be copied *in toto* from a chapter of the *Nītiśāstra* that was taught, say, to the Pāla or Sena Kings of Bengal in pre-Mussalman times. Politics like everything else of human life are the results of adaptation to the circumstances of time and place; and the history of a people has ever been powerfully influenced, although not in a monistic manner, as indicated above, by the geography and sociography of its habitat.
c7.s17.2
An analysis of the geographical facts and phenomena occurring in the Hindu *Nītiśāstras* or treatises on morals (social, economic and political) is therefore likely to be an important factor in assigning each text to the proper sets of physical and social conditions,—the “ecological complex”,—under which it was composed.