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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c14.s1: Section 1. Political Speculation in Ancient India

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c14.s1

Language
English

Section 1. Political Speculation in Ancient India

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Political Speculation in Ancient India.

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It is with reference to all this *milieu* in life and institutions that Hindu political thought has to be understood. Unfortunately the impression has got abroad since Max Müller¹ wrote the *History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature* and *India: What Can It Teach Us?* that the literature of the Hindus deals mainly with vague idealism, unpractical mysticism, and other-worldly absurdities, — at best, with metaphysical philosophizing. Besides, a few alleged pessimistic passages from one or two Buddhist books in the Pali language are erroneously taken to be the watchword of all Hindu speculation.

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¹ *His. Sans. Lit.* (ed. 1860), pp. 18, 25, 29—31; *India* (ed. 1883), 97—101, 105, 107, 117. Vide the author's "Hindu View of Life" in the *Open Court* for August, 1919, "Comparative Literature from the Hindu Standpoint" in the *Hindustan Review* (July 1919). *Hindu Art: Its Humanism and Modernism.*

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A complete history of Hindu literature whether in Sanskrit² or the Prakrit languages it is impossible yet to attempt. A catalogue of catalogues, the *Catalogus Catalogorum*, has been compiled by Aufrecht. It contains the shortest possible notices of about twenty five thousand manuscripts in Sanskrit. Thousands of other manuscripts remain still to be explored, tabulated and indexed. In the meantime a hasty glance at Aufrecht's volumes is enough to convince us that Sanskrit literature is the literature of every human activity from cooking, dancing, painting, cattle-breeding, gardening and grooming to erotics, thieving, warfare, navigation, and manufacture of military implements, in other words, of *dharma*, *artha*, *kâma*, and *mokṣa*. Needless to observe, economic, political and legal treatises occupy a great deal of space.¹

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² Vide Haraprasad Sastri's "Educative Influence of Sanskrit Literature" in the *Collegian*, 1916, for a concise but comprehensive account.

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¹ Aufrecht's volumes have been used extensively in the author's *Positive Background of Hindu Sociology*, Vol. I.

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For obvious reasons, in India as in Europe accounts of socio-political life and theory are to be met with in almost every branch of literature, prose and verse. Even literary epics like the *Raghu-vamśa* and the *Kirâtârjunîya*, and story-books like the *Pancha-tantra* and the *Daśa-Kumâracharita* can be exploited by sociological art-critics for the political message of the authors exactly in the same way as Virgil, Dante, Vondel and Milton have been used as interpreters of their ages. And of course in the two so-called epics, the *Râmâyaṇa* and the *Mahâbhârata*,² which according to the *Sâhitya Darpaṇa* ("Mirror of Literature"), a mediaeval work on rhetoric, are not poems at all but books of history, especially in the latter the serious student of politics would not have to labor hard in order to find rich material. To the same category belong also the *Purâṇas*, the storehouses of every conceivable information about India and Hindu culture. Nor would the *Brihat-Samhitâ* of Varâhamihira, the *Natural History* of the Hindu Pliny, fail to furnish important facts about polity and political speculation compiled, as they were, for a manageable *Encyclopedia Sanskritica*, by a distinguished scientist of Gupta India. Similarly the treatises on archery known as the *dhanurvedas* and the sexological works like the *Kâma-sûtra* of Bâtsâyana may be consulted for the subject matter of economics and politics, and of secular knowledge generally.

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² For an almost exhaustive study of the general politics of the *Mahâbhârata* vide Hopkins' article in the *Journal of the American Oriental Society*, 1889. But Book XII (*Sânti*) needs a separate special treatment.

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But it is not solely among *belles lettres* and books comprehended in the *trivium* or *quadrivium* of mediaeval European universities that the student of Hindu politics has to rummage. Law, public finance, constitution, town-planning, national defense, sovereignty, these and allied problems constituted in themselves the basis of two special literary categories. The first category is that of the *smriti-śâstras*, *dharma-śâstras* and *dharma-sûtras*,³ and the second is that of the *artha-śâstras* and *nîti-śâstras*. These two groups of *śâstras* (*Wissenschaften*) exhaust within them the entire range of Hindu social science. It is therefore to these treatises on *dharma* (law) and *smriti* (tradition) as well as *artha* (desired-for objects, i. e. human interests) and *nîti* (*mores*, or social duties) that we have to turn for the topics of a Montesquieu's *Esprit des Lois* or for what Aristotle would call "politics", i. e. the science of *samgha* or *samûha* (group) life. There is a difference, however, between these two classes of sociological literature. The *smriti* sciences are more social and religious, while the *artha* sciences are more, or rather exclusively, political and economic.

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³ For the status of these *śâstras* in the "grammar" of Hindu science vide Oldenberg's *Grihya-sûtras of Gobhila* etc. (S. B. E. Series), Introduction, xxxiii—iv. See the section on the "Autonomy of Political Śâstra" in *Pos. Back*, Vol. II, pp. 12—18.

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The *dharma-śâstras* which, like the Japanese *Kojiki* and *Nihongi*, incidentally treat of legal, economic and political matters in connection with socio-religious topics are named after about a score of promulgators¹ such as Manu, Atri, Viṣṇu, Hârîta, Yâjñavalkya, Uśanas, Angiras, Yama, Âpastamba, Samvarta, Kâtyâyana, Brihaspati, Parâśara, Vyâsa, Śamkha, Likhita, Dakṣa, Gautama, Śatâtapa, and Vasiṣṭha. The well known *Manu Samhitâ* and the *Institutes* of Yâjñavalkya are thus *smriti* or *dharma* books. All treatises on Hindu law (and custom) naturally fall within this group.

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¹ The list varies with different authorities. *cf.* Sris Chandra Vasu's *Yâjnavalkya Smriti*, Book I, Ch. i, Introduction, 4—5. Jolly's *Recht und Sitte* offers the most comprehensive study of the material embodied in the law-books. See chapter I (*Die Quellen*).

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It was to this legal literature of the Hindus, especially to the section bearing on inheritance and partition of property that the interest of European scholars was first directed. The plain reason was the exigencies of the newly imposed British administration about the time of the partition of Poland (1772). It is Manu and Yâjñavalkya, therefore, and subsidiarily the "law-books" of Brihaspati, Nârada, Gautama, Âpastamba, Viṣṇu, and Vasiṣṭha, popularized through the *Sacred Books of the East Series*, that obtained currency in the general culture of the nineteenth century. To students of comparative politics these so-called "sacred" books failed necessarily to furnish much data. Rather, on the contrary, this *Series* served to divert the attention of scholars from Hindu achievements in institutional (*samûha*) life, public law, social service and civic administration. All the same, some use of the oriental data has been made by Gomme for folklore and anthropological investigations; Gibelin and Maine succeeded in gleaning a few ideas for comparative jurisprudence; and Nietzsche² threw a new light on sociology by championing the claims of the *Manu Samhitâ* as against the *New Testament* of Christianity.

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² *The Twilight of Idols*, p. 46; *The Will to Power*, Vol. I, Book II, p. 126; *The Anti-Christ*, pp. 214—215.

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In this connection it is desirable to mention several treatises in the Pâli language which, although they stand apart from the general Sanskrit category, deserve a high rank as documents of Hindu public law. These are the statute-books of Buddhist monastic life and belong to the group of Śâkya’s *sîla* (conduct) teachings known as *Vinaya* (i. e. discipline, organization, government). Up till now Pâli literature has absorbed the attention of scholars solely from the standpoint of theological doctrines and psychological dogmas. But certain sections of it are rich in the material of civic and juristic institutions and ideals. The *Mahâvagga* and the *Chulla-vagga*,¹ no doubt treatises on ecclesiastical polity, may be singled out for studies in politics² similar to those which have been bestowed by European scholars on the Canon Law³ systematized by Gratian of Bologna (1150) in the *Decretum*, or on the writings of the Jesuit Fathers⁴ and the literature of the Oxford Movement.⁵ Buddhist compilations throw special light on constitutional law, conciliar (*samgha*) administration and republican nationalism, and are thus invaluable sources for an analysis of the democratic philosophy obtaining in pre-Maurya India.

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¹ English translations in the *S. B. E. Series.*

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² Figgis' *Fellowship of the Mystery*, V, VI; *Divine Right of Kings*, 219—220.

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³ Carlyle, II, 94, etc.; Taylor's *Mediaeval Mind*, Vol. II, 265—275.

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⁴ Figgis' *From Gerson to Grotius*, Lect. VI.

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⁵ Laski's *Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty*, Ch. III.

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