Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c15.39

c15.39

The divinity of kingship is a distinctive feature of the law-book of Manu, who assigns the attributes of eight gods to the king.⁹ The Kuṣāṇa and Sātavāhana inscriptions introduce the idea of royal divinity,¹⁰ but the Gupta epigraphs provide a more convincing counterpart for the ideas of Manu. The Allahabad inscription of Samudra Gupta, possibly belonging to the middle of the fourth century, compares the king to four gods.¹¹ This suggests that the order of eight gods found in Manu may have developed later. Similarly the term daivata applied by Manu to the brāhmaṇa¹ is applied as paramadaivata to Gupta kings first in the Bengal inscriptions of the fifth century.² All this would indicate a late date for chapters VII, IX and XI of Manu where these ideas occur. On the other hand the term akṣayanidhi used by Manu in the sense of perpetual deposit³ occurs as akṣayanivi in the second century inscriptions⁴ of the Kuṣāṇas and Sātavāhanas and is found later in several land grants.