The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c16.s2.t1.53

c16.s2.t1.53

We need not go into the details of the *Machtpolitik* conceived in Kautilya's *Artha-śâstra* or in the sections on warfare in the *Śukra-nîti*. But it is already clear that the doctrine of *mandala* has launched us at last into *mâtsya-nyâya*,¹ the logic of the fish, the Hobbesian law of beasts, anarchy. The doctrine assumes and is prepared for a world of eternally warring states. While "internal" sovereignty dawns as the "logic of the fish" sets, "external" sovereignty postulates the existence of the same logic as a fact in international relations. In one instance *danda*² or punishment, that is, "sanction" of the state, is exercised to crush anarchy, but it is apparently in order to maintain a world-wide anarchy that *danda* or *Faust-recht* is employed by one state against another. The theory of the state is thus reared on two diametrically opposite conceptions: