The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s2.t4.9

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.