The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c6.s1.13

c6.s1.13

But there is no longer any reason for clinging to the over-easy generalizations of the first *corpus* of comparative studies. A scientific history¹ of Hindu Napoleons and Frederick the Greats has been rendered possible in recent years through the wealth of epigraphic data and other archeological evidence, inadequate and fragmentary though they be. New resources to be exploited by social science have been thrown open by the discovery of old books like the *Artha-śâstra*² of Kautilya, the Bismarck of the first Hindu Empire (B. C. 320). These have been immensely multiplied indeed by the historical researches of scholars of the two hemispheres for about half a century. And they have already borne some fruit like the one expected by Herder from his researches in the German *Volksseele*. For, that last wave of "romanticism", the nationalist movement³ of Young India, which has won recognition as a worldforce in international politics since August 7, 1905, is receiving a conscious guidance and direction from the solid results of unquestionable antiquarian investigation. The sociological material is on the whole varied and copious enough to call for a philosophic handling, tentative albeit, in order that indology may be brought in line with the tendencies in other branches of modern inquiry.