The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s10.5

c9.s10.5

The texts as a rule tell us in so many words that a person becomes divine through certain actions, ceremonial or otherwise, and that divinity is but a consequence and not the cause or antecedent. We are to understand that Trasadasyu or for that matter anybody becomes a Varuṇa or an Indra as soon as he becomes a king or rather is consecrated. But we are not told that somebody becomes king because he is divine, godlike, descended from the gods or so forth. As soon as a person becomes a king he becomes a god. Quite pharaonic, as it is, a proposition like this is the exact antipodes to the position of those scholars who on the data of Vedic literature want to establish the general thesis that there is such a thing as king's rule by virtue of his divinity.