The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s3.t3.1

c10.s3.t3.1

It is not surprising, therefore, that Henry Maine whose indology was confined mostly to the *sâstras* and the so-called "village communities" of a politically defunct India should have started the notion, since then held in reverence by Eur-American sociologists, that Hindu states were not *dharma*-enacting i. e. legislating *samûhas* but mere tax-exacting bodies or rather tribute-collecting corporations.² But the student of Indian epigraphy today is master of enough historical material to be able to demonstrate that for the period of over fifteen hundred years from Kautilya, the Richelieu or Bismarck of the Mauryas, to Kulottûnga, the Châlukya-Chola, the statesmen of India consciously instituted laws and modified and revised them at will. The "making" of laws in addition to the simple "declaration" of traditional usages must therefore be reckoned among the institutional achievements of the Hindus.