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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c14.s3: Section 4. Relativity of Political Śâstras to Politics

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c14.s3

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Section 4. Relativity of Political Śâstras to Politics

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Neither merely pedagogic-ethical nor purely descriptive-anthropological are these political *vidyâs* of Sanskrit literature. As manuals of *râja-dharma* or duties for princes the *nîti-śâstras* have their natural analogues in Elyot's *Boke named the Governour* (1531), and in the works of John of Salisbury (twelfth century), Aquinas (thirteenth century), Occleve (fourteenth century), Patrizi (fifteenth century), and the like.³ For certain purposes, again, they may be slightly compared to treatises of the type of Fortescue's *Governance of England* (1476). Moreover, like the Arab encyclopaedist Al Farabi's (c 950) *Model City*, based as it was on Plato, and like the *Prince* and the *Utopia* the writings of Kautilya, Kâmandaka, Śukra and Bhoja are contributions to political "ideals" as well.

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³ ^3 Croft's *Elyot's Governour*, Vol. I, pp. lxiii—lxvi; Plummer's *Governance of England* (text introduction, notes).

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But, and here lies the chief difficulty in regard to every branch of Hindu thought including even psychology, logic and metaphysics, the machinery of "sociological criticism" is hardly applicable because of the paucity of "external evidences" with which to bear out, interpret or militate against, the "internal". In regard to the ancient and mediaeval works of political theory in the West modern scholarship has almost successfully decided as to which portions of which texts are descriptive-historical and which are normative, utopian or idealistic. This has been possible owing to the wealth of archeology. The evidences of literature have been systematically checked and appraised by reference to actual facts. "Pious wishes" of theorists have thus been disentangled from photographic accounts of institutions.

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The discrepancy between theory and practice, paradoxical though at first sight, is today almost a postulate in the history of European political speculation. Marsiglio of Padua in his *Defensor Pacis* (1324) is known to have anticipated Martin Luther and Machiavelli in the thorough-going secularization of politics. According to this writer, as Bluntschli explains it in the *Geschichte der neueren Staatswissenschaft*, the supreme institution is the state, the Pope has no right to the election of prince or emperor, and the *plenitudo potestatis* or omnipotence of the Pope is a myth. But this anti-theocratic theorizing was, as Sullivan remarks in his essay on *Marsiglio and Ockam*, the exact antipodes of the facts of the political world.

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Again, the Carlyles¹ have traced the *ideas* of natural equality, freedom, and justice, back to Cicero (first century B. C.) through Canonists and Church Fathers of the Middle Ages, and Roman jurists like Ulpian and Gaius. But during all this period slavery was recognized as a lawful and legitimate institution, privileges and inequalities in property were the rule, and the divine right of the king was an established fact. It was not until the French Revolution that legal effect was given to the doctrine of natural equality which had been promulgated ages ago by Stoics in opposition to the theory of the Aristotelians.

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¹ *Med. Pol. Theory*, Vol. I, pp. 9, 48, 114, 199; Vol. II, p. 118; Vol. III, p. 89; Vol. I, pp. 75, 76, 86, 116, 264; Vol. II, pp. 119, 120, 129; Vol. I, p. 70.

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Further, according to the *theory* of the lawyers, e. g. Ulpian (second century A. C.), the source of political authority was the people. But from Hadrian to Justinian (sixth century) the emperor's will was law. And in the fourteenth century Bartolus, the "prince of jurists", was but maintaining the jurisprudence of traditional *Realpolitik* when he affirmed that the Roman Emperor was *Deus in terris* and *sempiternus* and that to dispute him was sacrilege.²

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² Woolf's *Bartolus*, p. 24. See Figgis' *Divine Right*, pp. 343—372, for an estimate of Bartolus in the history of European political philosophy.

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Thus has the "historical school" of criticism established in Eur-America a distinction between the face-value of the political shibboleths and their real worth. But as yet, in spite of a legitimate presumption, there is not much rational ground for scientific scepticism in regard to the tenets of the political *sâstras* of India. Because, facts about the institutional environment of the Hindus can be gleaned only inadequately from indigenous sources. Nor do the contemporary accounts of Greek, Roman and Chinese writers on India afford much help in this direction.

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Not a single event has yet been discovered for the whole century from 230 to 330 A. C. The history of the Deccan for three hundred years between the Andhra and the Châlukya periods is a blank, as also that of Northern India during the latter half of the sixth century. The name of Samudra-gupta (A. C. 330—375), the "Indian Napoleon", was unknown to historians before 1904. Other digvijayî or "world-conquering" empire-builders like Govinda III, the Râstrakûta (795—815), and Bhoja (*c* 840—890) of the Gurjara-Pratîhâra House have come into prominence since then, — but practically as mere names however. Not even by name are more than half a dozen of the distinguished premiers, generals, finance-ministers and viceroys known today.

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Nobody could yet attempt a systematic history of Pâtali-putra, the Rome of the Hindus off and on for over a thousand years. Authentic information about gilds and other public associations of economic or constitutional importance is all but negligible. Fiscal and military institutions can rarely be described for any period excepting that of the Mauryas, thanks to the epoch-making discovery of the *Arthaśâstra*. A study of the Vikramâdityan empire in comparison, say, with the system of Roman imperialism from Constantine to Justinian, the contemporaries of the Guptas, the historic prototypes of Kâlidâsa’s legendary Raghu, or with the Bourbon monarchy from Louis XI to Louis XIV is out of the question for a long time to come.

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It is superfluous to add that the conditions are not ripe yet for "intensive" works like Vinogradoff's *English Society in the Eleventh Century*, Brissaud’s *History of French Public Law*, Abbott’s *Roman Political Institutions* or Dopsch’s "Economic and Social Foundations of European Culture"¹ being undertaken on the history of Hindu polity. Nay, what may be called the "extensive" researches of Guizot in the origins and growth of representative government among the Teutonic peoples await the patient toil of a long roll of spade-workers in Indian coins, inscriptions and excavations.

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¹ ^1 Vide Ulrich Wilcken’s "*Alexander der Grosse und die Hellenistische Wirtschaft*" in *Schmoller’s Jahrbuch* for 1921.

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Details of social and economic environment and of the actual secular life in ancient and mediaeval India have however been coming out recently. But, as would have appeared from the preceding chapters, they are so very scrappy that the Spencerian doctrine of the "relativity" of philosophy to institutions can hardly be made use of for the satisfactory explanation of the epochs of Hindu culture. And, of course, a history of Hindu political theories, like that of European by Bluntschli, Janet, Dunning or the Carlyles, is not a problem of the near future.

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The difficulties of appreciating the *nîti-śâstras* at the present moment can be understood if one were almost to imagine what would have been the value of Plato's *Republic* if only one of his *Dialogues* were accessible to modern scholars as the sole document of a period of, say, two hundred years, for which no other evidence of a political, economic, literary or numismatic character were available, or how much of the Renaissance in Europe would be intelligible today, if the sole evidence for it were More's *Utopia*. In the absence of trustworthy historical data, indologists, both Hindu and foreign, supposing that they were unbiased, have been led to understand or rather misunderstand a complex and varied culture-history of several thousand years from the popular verses of a few poets, or the traditional sayings of one or two religious teachers. But at least during the last ten or fifteen years archeology has been able to cry halt to this sort of uncritical over-valuation or under-valuation of India's achievements; for, the "positive background" of Hindu sociology is becoming clearer every day.¹

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¹ And yet two otherwise excellent publications of recent date, Banerjea's *Public Administration in Ancient India* (1916) and Havell's *History of Aryan Rule in India* (1918), are vitiated by a fundamental fallacy because they have made no distinction between political theory and political institutions. They have, besides, accepted the statements in the *śâstras* at their face-value without discriminating between "pious wish" and *Realpolitik*. On the other hand, the fallacy of an opposite character is equally manifest in Smith's *Oxford History of India* (1919) because the author has made it a point to disparage the *śâstras* in a sweeping manner without trying to evaluate them in the perspective of European writings of the same class. In an article on "Oriental Monarchies" in the *Mod. Rev.* (March 1917) J. N. Sarkar points out the merits of K. V. R.Aiyangar's *Considerations on Some Aspects of Ancient Indian Polity* (Madras, 1916); but the book has not reached the present author yet.

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