The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s6: De la Vallée Poussin and Foucher on the Problem of Unity
The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s6
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De la Vallée Poussin and Foucher on the Problem of Unity
c7.s6.1
But according to him,¹³ all the same, the history of India exhibits the alternatives of concentration and *émiettement* (crumbling) or disruption. "India is naturally disrupted,'' says he, and he quotes Foucher's *Gāndhāra*, Vol. II, as follows: "This is the law of her history,—the periodical reconstruction and disintegration of her empires. And there is not yet an example of any of them having endured for more than three hundred years.''
c7.s6.2
¹³ *L'Inde* (Paris 1930) pp. 75-76.
c7.s6.3
In regard to Foucher's opinion De la Vallée Poussin makes the following observations: "But India is not amorphous. *C'est une opinion classique mais erronée* (this is a classical opinion but erroneous); because it did not know of anything but the central government, when there was one, and the village. On the contrary, India is divided into a large number of petty states of the feudal or communal type, *rājās*, and cities, units solidly constituted and sufficiently organized for defence, in normal times, against external dangers.''
c7.s6.4
This explanation does not however serve to refute the "classical but erroneous opinion'' such as has become stereotyped in the English-speaking world in the writings of Smith, Rapson and others. The refutation has to be found in other directions. It is only necessary for the students of Indian history to arm themselves with any text-book of the historical geography of Europe as well as the figures about area and population, and watch the kaleidoscopic changes in political boundaries and therefore the ethnic constitutions of the European states. The truism will then force itself upon everybody that *émiettement* or disruption into petty states or *Kleinstaaterei* has been an eternal fact of European politics right up to our own days. The short duration of the dynasties of the Roman Empire is too well-known. The European Middle Ages exhibit dozens of Maurices by the side of one Justinian, legion of Charles the Fats by the side of one Charles the Great, and myriads of Adolfuses and Wenceslauses by the side of one Frederick II, the “wonder of the world.” Students of Dante do not have to come out of Europe all the way to India in order to discover the processes of *émiettement*. A statement in Engelbert’s *De Ortu et Fine Romani Imperii* should leave no doubt about Europe’s record in regard to the item in question. “The Roman Empire,” ran a mediæval opinion cited by him, “was and is always troubled by wars and rebellions; hardly ever were the gates of the temple of Janus shut; the greater number of Roman Emperors have died violent deaths; and the Roman Empire has been the cause rather of disorder than of peace,”¹⁴
c7.s6.5
¹⁴ C.N.S. Woolf: *Bartolus of Sassoferato* (Cambridge 1913) p. 286. B. K. Sarkar: *The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus* (Leipzig 1922), pp. 17, 21-26.