The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c3.14

c3.14

Altogether, in viewpoint and method of approach as well as in the ground covered and in conclusions this is perhaps the first comprehensive attempt at appraising, interpreting and laicizing the discoveries of *indianisme* for students of political science, and thereby introducing to the scientific world the people of ancient India as peers of the Greeks and the Romans and their mediaeval successors down to the *ancien régime*, both in constitution-making and in speculation on the state. In this endeavour the author's ally in logic is the critical technique of Abbott, Bluntschli, Brissaud, A. T. and R. W. Carlyle, Dunning, Figgis, Gomme, Joseph-Barthélemy, Lowie, and Schömann. These investigators — political and anthropological — are all the more acceptable because the studies undertaken by most of them have hardly any reference to the Orient and are to that extent untainted by any bias so far as Oriental culture is concerned.