The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s2.t4: 4. Bourbonism in the East and the West
The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s2.t4
- Language
- English
4. Bourbonism in the East and the West
c10.s2.t4.1
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.
c10.s2.t4.2
⁵ Guizot's *History of Representative Government*, Lect. XX, XXVI.
c10.s2.t4.3
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
c10.s2.t4.4
¹ Jenks' *History of Politics*, 88.
c10.s2.t4.5
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
c10.s2.t4.6
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.
c10.s2.t4.7
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".
c10.s2.t4.8
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").
c10.s2.t4.9
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.
c10.s2.t4.10
¹ *Vide* the section on the "doctrine of resistance in Hindu thought" in the *Pos. Back.* II, pp. 43—46.