Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c16.s1.t1: a) The Doctrine of Mâtsya-nyâya (The Logic of the Fish)

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c16.s1.t1

Language
English

a) The Doctrine of Mâtsya-nyâya (The Logic of the Fish)

c16.s1.t1.2

At the back of all thinking in India there was the process of dichotomy between the *a-râjaka* (non-state) and the state by .erentiating it from the non-state. Their method was logical as well as historical. That is, in the first place, they tried to investigate in what particulars the state analytically differs from the non-state; and in the second place, they tried to picture to themselves as to how the pre-statal condition developed into the statal, i. e. how the state grew out of the non-state. The chief solution of both these problems they found in the doctrine of *mâtsya-nyâya* or the logic of the fish.

c16.s1.t1.3

What, now, is the non-state according to Hindus? The same question was asked by the philosophers of Europe thus: "What is the state of nature?" And the Hindu answer was identical with the European.

c16.s1.t1.4

According to Hooker (1554—1600) in the *Ecclesiastical Polity* the state of nature is a state of strife. The *Leviathan* of Hobbes (1588—1670) declares similarly that the state of nature is a state of war and of no rights. In Spinoza's (1632—77) opinion also, in the *Tractatus Theologico Politicus*, the state of nature is a state of war and a state of the right of might. The non-state is thus conceived to be a war of "all against all", an "anarchy of birds and beasts", or a regime of vultures and harpies as John Stuart Mill would have remarked.

c16.s1.t1.5

It is interesting to observe that in China also the state of nature was analyzed by Moh-Ti (*c* 500—420 B. C.) in almost self-same terms. In the non-state, as Su Hu explains it in *The Development of Logic in Ancient China*, "each man has his own notion of right. Therefore one man has one notion of right, two men have two notions of right, and ten men have ten notions of right. The more men there are, the more conceptions of right will there be. Consequently each man approves his own notion of right and denounces every other man's. So they denounce one another".

c16.s1.t1.6

This Hobbesian "law of beasts and birds" or the *Naturprozess* of Gumplowicz is the logic (*nyâya*) of the fish (*matsya*) in India. Should there be no ruler to wield punishment on earth, says the *Mahâbhârata*¹ (*c* B. C. 600—A. C. 200), "the strong would devour the weak like fishes in water. It is related that in days of yore people were ruined through sovereignlessness, devouring one another like the stronger fishes preying upon the feebler". In the *Manu Samhitâ*² likewise we are told that "the strong would devour the weak like fishes" if there be a virtual reversion to the non-state (if, for example, the king is not vigilant in meting out punishments to those that should be punished). The *Râmâyaṇa*¹ also describes the non-state region as one in which “people ever devour one another like fishes”. And a few details about the conditions in this non-state are furnished in the *Matsya-Purâṇa*.² “The child, the old, the sick, the ascetic, the priest, the woman and the widow would be preyed upon”, as we read, “according to the logic of the fish” (should *danda* or punishment fail to be operative at the proper time).

c16.s1.t1.7

¹ *Sânti-Parva*, LXVII, 16—17; LXVIII, 11—12. The history of the theory of *mâtsya-nyâya* in European sociology from Heracleitus to Gumplowicz is clearly summarized in Barnes' article on "The struggle of races and social groups" in the *Journal of Race Development* (April, 1919), pp. 394—400. For Protagoras' conception of the pre-political condition see Barker's *Greek Political Theory—Plato*, p. 130.

c16.s1.t1.8

² VII, 20. LXVII, 31.

c16.s1.t1.9

The idea of the fish-like struggle for existence or self-assertion was thus a generally accepted notion in the “floating literature” of Hindûstân. It found an important place in the exclusively political treatises also. It was exploited as early as the latter half of the fourth century B. C. by Kautilya, one of the first, as we have seen, among the historical names in political science. According to him in the *Artha-śâstra*³ the logic of the fish prevails while the state is unformed. “In the absence of the wielder of punishment the powerful swallows the powerless”. And Kâmandaka also, who several centuries later generally follows Kautilya, writes in his *Nîti-sâra*⁴ (Digest of Politics) that in the absence of punishment (*danda*), the destructive or ruinous logic of the fish operates through mutual animosities of the people and leads to the disruption of the world.

c16.s1.t1.10

Nor was the doctrine confined within the circle of academicians and theorizers. We find it prevalent even among diplomatists and practical statesmen, e. g. of the ninth century. In the declarations of the Bengalî emperor Dharmapâla⁵ we are informed that his illustrious dynasty owed its origin to an “election” by the people. We are told further that it was “in order to escape from the logic of the fish”, i. e. in order to escape from being absorbed into another kingdom, or to avoid being swallowed like a fish that the people of Bengal “made his father Gopâla accept the sovereignty”. The mediaeval Hindu monarch was here using almost the same metaphor as has been employed in the nineteenth century by Mill in his essay on *Liberty* when he explains how “in order to prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down”.

c16.s1.t1.11

This theory of the non-state or the state of nature has had important arings on other doctrines of Hindu political philosophy. For the present we have only to note that in India political speculation was not divorced from the general intellectual currents in the society. The political philosophers kept themselves abreast of the contemporary thought in other branches of inquiry. The logical apparatus and dialectical machinery used in political discussions were familiar instruments in the cultural *milieu* of the scientific world.

c16.s1.t1.12

*Mâtsya-nyâya*, for instance, is an expressive technical term in India's legal phraseology. In Raghu-nâtha's (fifteenth century) *Laukika-Nyâya-Samgraha*¹ (Compilation of Popular Legal Maxims) we find the "logic of the fish" coupled with the "logic of the monsters". The logic of the monsters is known as *Śundopaśunda Nyâya*. Śunda and Upaśunda are two monster-brothers, like Pyrochles and Cymochles in Spenser's *Faerie Queene*. They are said to have quarrelled over the nymph Tilottamâ and destroyed each other in the contest. Thus when two contradictory facts are equally strong, they neutralize each other. But when they are of unequal strength, i. e. when the one can overpower the other, there is generated a field for the operation of the logic of the fish and the survival of the fitter.

c16.s1.t1.13

¹ Kishori Lal Sarkar's *Rules of Interpretation in Hindu Law*, Lecture VI, p. in

c16.s1.t1.14

The logic of the fish arises, as Raghu-nâtha explains it, under a double set of conditions. First, there must have to be a conflict between a powerful and a comparatively powerless unit. And secondly, the latter must have been crushed and obliterated by the former. It is frequently referred to, says he, in the *Itihâsas* (treatises on history) and the *Purâṇas*, and he quotes the following passage from Vaśiṣṭha:² "By this time that Rasâtala region had become extremely sovereignless, i. e. an anarchic non-state, characterized by the ignoble logic of the fish." Vaśiṣṭha's verse is elucidated by Raghu-nâtha with the gloss that "strong fishes began to make an end of the weaker ones".

c16.s1.t1.15

² Cited in Maitra's *Gauda-lekha-mâlâ* (Inscriptions of the Bengali Imperial Dynasty) p. 19. theory of *mâtsya-nyâya* in in Barnes' article on "The pril, 1919), pp. 394—400.

c16.s1.t1.16

The non-state is then a state of anarchy, one in which the "tyranny of robbers" has full play, "justice is non-existent", and the "people prey upon one another". It is "the greatest evil".³ "Enjoyment of wealth and wives is impossible" under it.⁴ Only the robber is then happy. Even his happiness is precarious, because "the one is deprived of his loot by two, the two are robbed of theirs by several combined".⁵ "A free man is made a slave" and "women are raped".⁶

c16.s1.t1.17

³ *Mahâ.*, *Śânti*, LXVII, 1—3.

c16.s1.t1.18

⁴ *Ibid*, *Ibid*, LXVII, 12. ker's *Plato*, p. 130.

c16.s1.t1.19

⁵ *Ibid*, *Ibid*, LXVII, 14.

c16.s1.t1.20

⁶ *Ibid*, *Ibid*, LXVII, 15. tury A. C.) in discussing the causes which have made government ssary holds the view that "men departed from God and hated their w men, and fell into confussion and disorder of every kind; and so set men over each other imposing the fear of man upon man, and ting men to the authority of men, that by this means they might elled to some measure of righteousness and just dealing".[^1]

c16.s1.t1.21

Idea that "the institution of government was made necessary and is a divinely appointed remedy for sin" was continued and developed by St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great. It was "emphatically restated by the ecclesiastical and political writers" of the period from the ninth to the thirteenth century, and found a champion in Pope Hildebrand, Gregory VII (1073—1085).²

c16.s1.t1.22

² *Ibid*, Vol. II, 143—146, Vol. III, 97, 105, 187.

c16.s1.t1.23

The verdict of Hindu thinkers on the nature of man is identical. According to Kâmandaka,³ men are by nature subject to passions and are covetous of one anothers' wealth and wives. "Rare", says Manu,⁴ "is the man pure or sinless" (by nature). *Durlabho hi śuchirnarah.* The lower ones tend to usurp the places of the higher. People are prone to interfering with the rights of others⁵ and violating morals and manners.⁶

c16.s1.t1.24

³ II, 42.

c16.s1.t1.25

⁴ VII, 22.

c16.s1.t1.26

⁵ Manu VII, 21.

c16.s1.t1.27

⁶ *Ibid*, VII, 24.

c16.s1.t1.28

Not that there was no Saturnian golden age of pristine purity and bliss. For, says the *Mahâbhârata*⁷ anticipating by over a millennium the dogmas of Father Lactantius and others, "at first there was neither state nor ruler, neither punishment nor anybody to exercise it. The people used to protect one another through innate righteousness (*dharma*) and sense of justice". But, as among Stoics and Canonists, the "fall" of mankind is accounted for by Hindus also on the basis of a postulate of sin, loss of true religion, *moha*, stupidity, and what not.

c16.s1.t1.29

⁷ *Śânti* LIX, 14.

c16.s1.t1.30

On the whole, therefore, it is not a roseate romantic conception of human tendencies and instincts that the *Mahâbhârata* offers. The dictum, "spare the rod, and spoil the child", proverbial in western pedagogics, might be dittoed by the Hindu thinkers. For, as we read in the Book on *Śânti*, by nature "men tend to overthrow⁸ one another. Left to itself the "whole world would be in a mess" like a devil's workshop. As a rule, men are used to behaving like "the creatures⁹ that cannot see one another when the sun and the moon do not shine", or like th "fishes in shallow waters", or "birds in places safe from molestat where they can fly at each other's throats in a suicidal strife".

c16.s1.t1.31

¹ *Ibid*, Vol. I, p. 129.

c16.s1.t1.32

⁸ *Ibid* LXVIII, 8.

c16.s1.t1.33

⁹ *Ibid*, LXVIII, 10—12.

c16.s1.t1.34

Men, we are told, normally acknowledge only one right and is the right of might. Those who do not part with their proper the asking run the risk of being killed.¹ Wives, children and the weak are liable to be seized perforce by the strong. "Murd finement and persecution constitute the eternal lot of the prop classes".² The very phrase, 'This is mine' (*Mamedam*), may be lost from the vocabulary, and *mamatva* or property become extinct" — an ideal which is being anxiously sought for in the contemporary Utopia of Soviet Russia.

c16.s1.t1.35

The natural tendency of human relations,³ again, according to the *Mahâbhârata*, is toward sexual promiscuity (*yonidoṣa*). The formation of marriage alliances or of stable societies is not instinctively prompted to man as he is. And if possible, he would shirk even agriculture, commerce, and other means of livelihood, preferring a state of slothful ease and "primrose path of dalliance".

c16.s1.t1.36

Such is the man natural, or man as nature made him, in the political anthropology of the *Mahâbhârata*. This state of license is the furthest removed not only from a Wordsworthian "Nature's holy plan" but also from the picture of original man governed by a law of "reason" as exhibited in Locke's treatises on *Civil Government*. Nor is it anything but antipodal to the Rousseauesque faith in man's natural impulses and idealization of the "human heart by which we live". Instead, therefore, of postulating with the writer of the *Emile* that "all things are good as their Author made them, but everything degenerates in the hands of man", or finding "reason to complain what man has made of man", the Hindu students of political theory set a high premium on the institutions and conventions that make up the artificial thing called civilization. In fact it is to "educate" man out of the deplorable mire of primitive license and beastly freedom that government has been instituted, say they. The state is designed to correct human vices or train them and open out the avenues to a fuller and higher life. And this is possible only because of *daṇḍa*.

c16.s1.t1.37

'll discussions of political theory, therefore, the doctrine of *daṇḍa* most place. Some writers have even called their treatises on politics and statecraft *Danda-nîti* (Laws of Sanction, or Science of Danda). In the *Manu Samhitâ*, at any rate, no other category is calculated to command greater attention. For, is not *danda* “divine, God’s own son, the protector of all beings, and as powerful as law itself?”¹ Indeed, it keeps all created beings to their respective duties (*sva-dharma*) the “virtues” of Plato or the “functions” of Bradley and other neo-Hegelians, and makes them cooperate to the enjoyment (*bhoga*) or happiness of mankind.² Nay, it is in reality “the king, the male (compared with which all other things are female), the manager of affairs, the ruler, the surety for the four orders pursuing their own duties in life”.³ Further, it governs, protects, watches; and, last but not least, is identical with law.⁴ To crown all, the whole world is rectified by *danda*⁵ and even the gods and demigods are subject to its authority.⁶

c16.s1.t1.38

¹ *Manu*, VII, 14.

c16.s1.t1.39

² *Ibid.* VII, 15; cf. Carr’s *Philosophy of Benedetto Croce*, pp. 127 etc.; Bosanquet’s *Some Suggestions in Ethics*, pp. 43—44, 64—65; *Pos. Back*, Vol. II, p. 28.

c16.s1.t1.40

³ *Ibid*, VII, 17.

c16.s1.t1.41

⁴ *Ibid*, VII, 18.

c16.s1.t1.42

⁵ *Ibid*, VII, 22.

c16.s1.t1.43

⁶ *Ibid*, VII, 23.

c16.s1.t1.44

*Danda*, as interpreted by Manu, is obviously the very principle of omnipotence, comparable to the *majestas* of Bodin or the *summa potestas* of Grotius. It is the abstraction of that power whose concrete embodiment is *aiśvarya*, *svâmitva* or sovereignty in a state, which is explained by Figgis as the real “divine right” of kings. It is absolute, with jurisdiction over all, uncontrolled by any entity.

c16.s1.t1.45

A ruler *in office* personifies this *danda*, but the ruler *as a person* is subject to it as every other individual is. Hence the inevitable dilemma of kingship in the Hindu theory of the state. It is by wielding this terrible weapon that the king is to preside over and regulate the state. He is the *danda-dhara* i. e. holder or bearer of the instrument of sovereignty, but he is himself liable to be scorched by it, may be one of its first victims for he is not “infallible”.

c16.s1.t1.46

In Hindu political thought, therefore, *danda* is a two-handed engine and cuts both ways. On the one hand, it is a terror to the people and is a corrective of social abuses. It is a moralizer, purifier, and civilizing agent. As Kâmandaka⁷ observes, it is by the administration of *danda* that the state can be saved from a reversion to the logic of the fish and utter annihilation, as well as the people set right. It is through fear of punishment, according to the *Sukra-nîti*,⁸ that people become “virtuous" and refrain from committing aggression or indulging in untruths. *Danda* is efficacious, moreover, in causing the cruel to become mild, the wicked to give up wickedness, and the garrulous to beware of loquacity. It can subdue even beasts, and of course it frightens the thieves and terrifies the enemies into submission as tributaries, demoralizing all those that are wayward. Nay, it is good also for preceptors and can bring them to their senses, should they happen to be addicted to an extra dose of vanity or unmindful of their own avocations.¹ Finally, it is the foundation of civic life, being the "great stay of all virtues"; and all the "methods and means of statecraft" would be fruitless without a judicious exercise of *danda*.² Its uses as a beneficent agency in social life are, therefore, unequivocally recommended by Śukra.³

c16.s1.t1.47

⁷ II, 40—42.

c16.s1.t1.48

⁸ IV, i, lines 92—97.

c16.s1.t1.49

¹ IV, i, lines 99—100.

c16.s1.t1.50

² IV, i, lines 101—102.

c16.s1.t1.51

³ IV, i, line 98.

c16.s1.t1.52

But, on the other hand, *danda* is also a most potent instrument of danger to the ruler himself, to the powers that be. For, "unweary lies the head that wears the crown", in more sense than one. The mal-administration of *danda*, says Kâmandaka,⁴ leads to the fall of the ruler. If the ruler is wise enough to manipulate it carefully, as Manu observes,⁵ it is surely conducive to the greatest good of the people. But what is the guarantee that the holder of the weapon would not bungle with it and handle it thoughtlessly or arbitrarily? Should that be the case, the *danda* would lead to the ruin of the state. And would the office-bearer, the king, got scot-free? By no means. Manu is an advocate of regicide. He does not hestitate to declare that *danda* would smite the king who deviates from his duty, from his "station in life". It would smite his relatives too together with his castles, territories and possessions. The common weal depends, therefore, on the proper exercise of the *summa potestas*, the *aiśvarya*.

c16.s1.t1.53

⁴ II, 39.

c16.s1.t1.54

⁵ VII, 19.

c16.s1.t1.55

*Danda* thus carries with it its own nemesis, and we are at once reminded of Mill who says in his *Liberty* that "as the king of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against his beak and claws". It is a like bulwark of people's rights as against the ruler that is furnished by the Hindu doctrine of *danda*, in so far as its efficacy is attributed to the careful handling of it. In the first place, Manu would not allow any ill-disciplined man¹ to be the administrator of the *danda*. In the second place, the "greatest amount of wisdom", e. g. that accruing from the "help of councillors and others"² is held to be the essential pre-condition for the handling of this instrument. And here is available the logical check on the possible absolutism of the *danda-dhara* in the Hindu theory of sovereignty.

c16.s1.t1.56

⁶ VII, 28—29.

c16.s1.t1.57

By the doctrine of *danda*, then, the state is conceived as a pedagogic institution or moral laboratory, so to speak, not necessarily a Lycurgan barrack, of course. It is an organization in and through which men's natural vices are purged, and it thereby becomes an effective means to the general uplifting of mankind. Hindu theorists therefore consider the state to be an institution "necessary" to the human race if it is not to grovel in the condition of *mâtsya-nyâya* ruled by the law of beasts. Man, if he is to be man, cannot do without political organization. He must have a state, and must submit to sanction, coercion and punishment, in a word, to *danda*.

c16.s1.t1.58

The Theory of Property, Law, and Social Order.

Cites (8)