The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c16.s2.t2.6

c16.s2.t2.6

“Monarchy at its highest,” we read in the *Aitareya Brâhmana*,⁴ “should have an empire extending right up to natural boundaries, it should be territorially all-embracing, up to very ends uninterrupted, and should constitute and establish one state and administration up to the seas.” The ancient theorists were evidently thinking of the Indian continent as identical with the entire world. The achievement of a pan-Indian nationality was in their eyes the equivalent of a world federation just as in medieval European theory the unification of western Christendom was tantamount to the constitution of one state for all mankind, or as in the Eur-American world-peace movements of today “the world” is postulated to be the territories inhabited by albinoes or white races.