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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s2: Section 4. Supreme Councils

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s2

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Section 4. Supreme Councils

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We have seen that in addition to what may for general purposes be described as mass-meetings of the villagers and often as "representative" assemblies of the rural folk, ordinarily known as the *panchâyats* (or councils of the five), Hindu India was used to several other *sabhâs* or councils as organs of public administration. These were the conferences of the ecclesiastical associations (*samghas*), the agricultural, industrial and commercial *samûhas*, i. e. gilds or *śreṇîs*, and the municipal corporations of cities like Govardhana, Pâtali-putra, Ujjayinî, Taxila and so forth. The conciliar element in Hindu polity was further embodied in another important institution. This was the Supreme Council of the king or emperor.

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In regard to these royal and imperial assemblies, however, no olu constitutional documents or gazetteers have yet been unearthed by archaeological exploration unless the *Artha-śâstra* of Kautilya be partially treated as such. Neither the inscriptions on stone and copper plates discovered up to date nor the stories by Greek and Chinese travellers afford anything more than tantalizing glimpses into the institutions such as may have actually existed among the people.

1. The Tamil Assemblies

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During the early centuries of the Christian era there were "Five Great Assemblies" in the kingdoms of Chera, Chola and Pandya in southernmost India. The assembly of "people's representatives" safeguarded the rights and privileges of the people. The assembly of priests directed all religious ceremonies. The assembly of physicians supervised public and royal health. The assembly of astrologers fixed auspicious times for public ceremonies and predicted important events. It was thus similar to the Roman college of augurs. And the assembly of ministers attended to the administration of justice and collection and expenditure of revenue. Each of these assemblies had a separate place in the metropolis for the transaction of its business and holding its meetings.¹ All these assemblies were what we should call “national” councils, i. e., different from and higher than the village *panchâyats*.

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¹ Pillai’s *Tamils*, pp. 108—114.

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It is not clear as to which, if any, of these assemblies looked after the making of laws. Legislation may be presumed to have been the work of the “people’s representatives” who constituted the first among the five national bodies. But there is another point on which more light is needed. Whom did this body represent? What connection did these representatives have with the primary assemblies, the rural *sabhâs*? The *panchâyats* of the villages or the local soviets may be presumed to have sent up deputies to the capital in order to form the metropolitan assembly of the people.

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In any case it is apparent that representation as a political device has to be counted in its elementary form among the institutions of Hindu public life. And this representative system, in so far as election implies representation, was not confined to the national, central or supreme assemblies. For, as we have noticed in a previous section, even the rural communes were, as a rule, constituted on the elective principle, and not all village or local assemblies were therefore “direct” democracies of the entire folk.

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For the present, however, the Tamil “great assemblies” should appear to be the only specimens of “indirect” or representative polity on a national scale. In reality, details about supreme councils in other periods of Hindu politics are almost nil. But in Maurya India, as we can glean from Kautilya’s *Artha-śâstra*, there were two Imperial Councils.²

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² Law’s “State Council in Ancient India” in the *Mod. Rev.* for April 1917.

2. The Kautilyan Councils

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The first was known simply as the *Sabhâ* or the deliberative “Council of State”. It studied the “means of commencing operations” and “providing men and materials”. “Distribution of place and time” was one of its functions. And it also addressed itself to the “counteracting of disaster" and "successful accomplishment". The councillors were asked by the Emperor for their advice individually and collectively, and their opinions had to be given together with reasons.

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The second was the *Mantri-parishat* or the executive "Council of Ministers". Its functions were fourfold: commencement of work not begun, completion of the work already begun, improvement of accomplished work, and proper execution of passed orders. Members of this body did not ordinarily take part in the deliberations of the "Council of State" but only looked after their respective charges. On emergency, however, they might be invited to join the Council of State. The advice of the majority (*bhûyisṭhâh*) would appear to have often been rejected by the Emperor at discretion if some other course appealed to him as more conducive to success.

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The description of the councils is however given in such general terms that one wonders as to whether Kautilya was here adumbrating a theory or giving an account of the actual institutions of public law.

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In the theory¹ of the constitution as expressed in the *Mahâbhârata*, *Kâmandakî-nîti*, *Śukra-nîti*, Agni-Purâṇa, and other treatises, the council is a very important estate of the realm. The councillors constitute, as Bharadvâja says, the "sole prop" of the state.² The ideal appears to have been realized to a certain extent in *Realpolitik*.

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¹ *Am. Pol. Sc. Rev.* for Nov. 1918, pp. 585—586. While it is possible to trace *ideas* of constitutional government in the political *śâstras*, it is not allowable, as Banerjea does (*Public*, 50—51), to describe the actual Maurya monarchy as "limited".

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² *Artha*, Book V, Ch. IV.

3. The Power of the Ministers

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In ancient Madras the orders of Râja-râja and Râjendra had to be approved of by the *Olai-nâyakam* (chief secretary) and another dignitary.³ And it was with the approval of the viceroy and the rural *sabhâs* concerned that the Chola promulgations were registered and preserved in the record office. It was in conjunction with the Council that the kings of Ceylon⁴ conferred immunities, issued decrees, and made grants. Sometimes we find the councillors making themselves into king-makers. With the "people's approval" they elected at least one historical ruler, Harṣa-vardhana, to kingship (A. C. 606).⁵

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³ Aiyangar's *Anc. Ind.*, 177—178.

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⁴ *Epigraphia Zeylanica*, Vol. I, nos. 9, 21; Vol. II, no. 5; *Infra*, p. 75.

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⁵ *Si-yu-ki*, Vol. I, pp. 210—211.

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In Kashmir, as we read in the *Râja-taraṅgiṇî*,⁶ Pratâpâditya I was invited by the ministers from abroad and installed on the throne. Similarly they were instrumental in crowning one of themselves, the minister Sandhimati, as Ârya-râja. The founder of the Karkota dynasty also, a man of humble origin, owed his coronation to the initiative of Premier Khankha (c 625).

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⁶ Books II, verses 6, 114—116, and III, verse 528.

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There are, besides, several instances of the ministers remonstrating with the king against arbitrary expenditure. If Hiuen Thsang's stories are to be relied on, Asoka the Great's financial extravagance was greatly curbed by his minister Râdhâ-gupta.¹ A councillor likewise prevented Vikramâditya of Srâvasti from indulging in ultra-philanthropic schemes. His arguments² were thoroughly modern. "Your Majesty", as the member of the council is said to have pointed out, "indeed will get credit for charity, but your minister will lose the respect of all *** and then fresh imposts will have to be laid *** and then the voice of complaint will be heard." The power of the council is likewise evident in an event of the second century A. C. It was out of his private purse that Rudradâmana, a satrap of the Kuṣâṇ Empire, was compelled to repair the Sudarśana Lake at Girnar (in Kathiawar, close to the Arabian Sea) because of the Council's opposition to the project.³

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¹ *Hiuen Thsiang*, Book VIII.

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² *Si-Yu-ki*, Vol. I, p. 106, 107.

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³ *Ep. Ind.*, 1905—1906, p. 49.

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As indicated above, the *Sabhâ* or *Pariṣat* as a supreme council of the state is well known in the *Râmâyaṇa*, the *Mahâbhârata* and the *nîti-śâstras* (literature on polity).⁴ But as yet positive knowledge about the institution exhausts itself merely in stray references to a few premiers, financiers or minister-generals of actual history.

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⁴ *Mahâbhârata* (*Sabhâ*, V, 30; *Śânti*, LXXXIII, 47), *Râmâyaṇa* (*Ayodhyâ*, C, 18), *Śatapatha Brâhmaṇa*, II, 3, 2, 3; V, 3, 1, 10. *Atharva Veda*, V, 31, 6, VII, 12, 1, 2; *Rig Veda*, VI, 28, 6, VIII, 4, 9; *J. A. O. S.*, Vol. XIII, pp. 148—151; *Śukra*, II, lines 23, 105—109, 110—113, 141—143, 145—148 (number of councillors), 220—224, 232—233 (board of three members for each department of state) etc.

4. Bourbonism in the East and the West

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Apparently the supreme councils of Hindu polity, although "permanent" bodies, did not for all practical purposes rise above the pretensions and powers of the Frankish *Champs de Mars* and *Champs de Mai*, or the *officium palatinum* of the Visigoths and the Council of Toledo in Spain.⁵ The *Sabhâ* of Hindu monarchies could not thus be anything more than a privileged oligarchy. And evolutionally speaking, it came to discharge the functions of the democratic *agora* of the Vedic *civitas* in much the same manner as the council of the *witan* in the early English constitution inherited, as a close exclusive body, the status of the ancient Teutonic folk-moot.

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⁵ Guizot's *History of Representative Government*, Lect. XX, XXVI.

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The expansion of the state in area and population was responsible both in Asia and Europe, first ,for the strengthening of the monarchy, and secondly, for the gradual dwindling of the old democratic assembly of the entire people or of the majority of the masses into an aristocratic corporation of the king's ministers, advisers or councillors.¹

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¹ Jenks' *History of Politics*, 88.

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England is distinguished from the rest of Europe by a continuity of democratic evolution during the Middle Ages, at any rate from the fourteenth century on, up to the "glorious revolution" of 1688. But, for over two thousand years since the destruction of Greek liberties by the "Emathian conqueror" and the final abolition of the last Hindu republics by the Gupta "superman" the world both in the East and the West knew of only one statecraft. In one word it may be summed up in Bourbonism such as was embodied in Louis XIV's dictum, *L'état c'est moi.*²

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² cf. Uyehara's *Political Development of Japan* (1867–1909), pp. 23–27. *Vide* Adams' two books on English Constitution for the "feudal contract" origin of limited monarchy. The idea that the democratic institutions of England can be traced back to old Teutonic polity seems now to be exploded.

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None of the references cited by K. P. Jayaswal in his article on "The Hindu Parliament under Hindu Monarchy" in the *Modern Review* for February 1920 can be interpreted to indicate that the *jânapada* is "an institution", viz. the *sabhâ* or assembly of the *janapada* (country) as he claims it to be. It is impossible on the strength of his evidences to attach any technical significance to the term. It denotes nothing more than "an inhabitant of *janapada*". The singular number, wherever it occurs in connection with the term, must not mislead anybody, for according to the grammatical aphorism (*jâtau ekavachanam*) the singular simply indicates "a class".

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No extraordinary value is therefore to be attributed to the passage in the Hâthigumphâ inscription (165 B. C.) where the word *jânapada* occurs. The import merely is what is conventionally related of almost all Hindu kings in the epics, stories and eulogistic verses. We are to understand simply that Khâravela's work afforded satisfaction to his subjects. The passage cannot imply that "privileges" were granted to "parliament" (the "national assembly").

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All such statements, whether epigraphic or literary, bespeak at best the general democratic trend¹ of Hindu political speculation but do not by any means necessarily point to the popular, parliamentary or conciliar government of the realm. If we are asked to take the *jânapada* in an institutional (corporate or collective) sense wherever it occurs in relation with a king, or for that matter if we have to take every passage in Sanskrit or Prakrit bearing on a ruler's satisfactory performance of his duties towards the *prakriti* (people) as evidence of a legal control or even a *de facto* authority exercised by the people in administration, the entire history of Hindu India down to 1300 should have to be treated as the history of constitutional monarchy, — more radical at times perhaps than has yet been realized any where on earth. Only a postulate like this can explain how Mr. Jayaswal has been carried away from point to point until he is forced to the furthest logical consequence, viz. the sensational pronouncement at Sec. 288.

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¹ *Vide* the section on the "doctrine of resistance in Hindu thought" in the *Pos. Back.* II, pp. 43—46.

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