MANU ON RAJA DHARMA

In Hindu philosophy, Raja dharma, the policy of the state, was fundamentally governed by the principle of dharma . The state policies were applied to administrative structure, grants, taxation, war ethics, peace policies,  private matters like marriage, debt.

The justice was based on laws deriving their power from four fountainheads of authority in the descending order of precedence: dharma, vyavahara [judicial proof], charitra [popular usage] and raja sasana [king’s edict]*

• An exception is the Artha Shastra in which king’s edict supersedes all the other authorities.

Relative laws are not constant. They are only suitable for a particular age [yuga dharma as expounded in the Mahabharata] Hence, laws must change with the vicissitudes of time to fit the extant politico-socio-eco scheme. The goal is to manifest the higher absolute law, the ritam, the truth force in this relative plane. Thus, at times, laws could undergo radical departure too. The smritis of different ages along with their commentaries, thus are also an invaluable historical record, for they are a reflection of the changing patterns of those socio-eco-political determinants of India through the ages.

In Sanatana Dharma; A ksatra king is the protector of dharma. In all his dealings, he was to be guided by the light of dharma. He is not some peremptory authority who could dictate his whims and fancies for it is dharma which is supreme, and every king, howsoever great must be subservient to it. No king could attach a claim to something, which deserved not to be taken. [MS 7.170]

 He rules on the people’s behalf, it is his solemn duty to care for the welfare of his subjects, render them content and happy, and shield them against misery and foreign foes. Consolidation of his empire, should not intrude on their personal property. In effect, a king must uphold the natural aspirations of those he governs, by ensuring amicable conditions for people to follow their svadharma, just as he should follow his by not intruding in that of others.

Brahman philosophers were the knowers of dharma. They would suggest the political theories, which were attuned to the vedic ideals, and the king was to sympathetically consider them while promulgating his judgment. The king was vested mostly with executive powers, while the law courts exercised the legislative powers, which is fairly evident from the rich legal codes, especially those anterior to Manu like Yagnavalkya, Narada, Atri, Devala, Kattayani although as we shall see even Manu’s legal code was fairly advanced for its age and covered most key points.

The king, thus in Hindu philosophy was not to be a philosopher. The king’s primary concern was with artha. The word artha is derived from the root ri, which means to emit; or derived from arth; meaning desire. Artha also means wealth, motive and purpose. Artha thus has acquired multiple connotations over the ages. However, Manu warns that if artha goes against dharma or kama, it should be abandoned! [MS 4.176] Kautilya on the contrary believed all three to be interdependent, and the king was to enjoy all three in an equal degree. Kautilya believes artha and artha alone is important as dharma and kama depend upon artha for their realization [Artha. 1.7]

The king, was to be guided by a body of brahmana philosophers, and established doctrines on political theory; the marriage of the temporal and spiritual is emphasized here. Thus, the Indian concept of Raja dharma is poles apart from that suggested by Plato, who believed in the ideal of philosopher kings. However, the folly of such a scheme is its inherent incompatibility with practical ethos. As Arnold Toynbee, the eminent historian of the 20^th century, confirms;

“Plato was clearly wrong when he said all kings must be philosophers. The philosopher king is doomed to fail, because he is attempting to unite two contradictory natures in a single person. The philosopher stultifies himself by trespassing on the king’s path of ruthless action while conversely the king stultifies himself by trespassing on the philosopher’s field of loveless and pitiless contemplation. Like the saviour with the time machine, the philosopher king is driven into proclaiming his own failure into drawing a failure which convicts him of being a saviour with the sword in disguise. If the sword spells defeat, and the time machine self deception; the philosopher’s mantle and the king’s mask are emblems of hypocrisy; and since hypocrite and saviour are incompatible roles; our search for a genuine saviour must be carried forward”

The search for establishing a perfect kingdom; the Ram Rajya begins by constructing the ideal king. Without Rama, there could never be a RamRajya!  Thus, Manu says the king should have undergone the same vedic samskaras and disciplines as the Brahmana. [MS 7.2] He should be free from the vices of desire [MS 7.45,47,50] He should be rooted to truth and purity at all times [MS 7.31]  Even in the Artha Shastra of Kautilya, we find the same ideas pervading the spirit of the text. Restraint can be enforced by abandoning lust, anger, greed, vanity, haughtiness, and overjoy. [Artha 1.6] In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness, in their welfare his welfare, whatever pleases himself he shall not consider as good, but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider as good. [Artha 1.19] A king is required to be ever active, ever wakeful, ever energetic.

The ethical contents of dharma are; steadfastness, patience, self control, honesty, purity, restraint of the senses, wisdom, learning, truth, absence of anger. [MS 6.92] A dharmic king must ensure he possesses all such virtues. All such virtues were present in Shri Rama, says Narada in the first canto of Bala Kanda in Valmiki’s Ramayana…

The king wields danda [literally a staff, secondarily punishment, and thirdly as kingly authority] In fact, danda becomes synonymous with the science of government. Danda to Manu is practical politics. Manu believes it to be a necessary evil, for rare are pure men, so danda is a means to protect dharma, by compelling people to conduct themselves properly [MS 7.14,15] Similarly, the Mahabharata takes the view that originally in the most perfect epoch, there was no king nor danda, the science of polity was created when men fell from their high standards by Saraswati, the goddess of learning. The perfect system is anarchy, and the most debased system is also anarchy…a governing body is a middle path between those extremes.

For Manu, a manly king uses the dana properly and discerningly to regulate society; a ksatriya should protect society according to justice. A king properly exercising authority prospers in virtue, wealth and pleasure but a sensual, unfair and base king verily perishes by authority. For authority, very glorious and hard to be borne by the undisciplined, destroys a king, together with his kin when he has indeed departed from dharma.

[MS 7.27,28,31]  A king who is pure, truthful and a follower of the treaties, who has good helpers and is prudent is capable of exercising authority. The chief duty of a ksatriya is simply the protection of the people, for a king who receives the recompense specified is bound by law to protect his people. [MS 7.144] A king who, while he protects his people, is defied by (foes), be they equal in strength, or stronger, or weaker, must not shrink from battle, remembering the duty of Kshatriyas [MS 7.87] In case, a king shirks from his duty in spite of taxing his people, he will soon sink into hell. [MS 7.307]

Thus, the king must exercise due caution while wielding danda.  Only in proper application of danda, the king is guaranteed success in his quest for moksha. Some heterodox schools like that of the Lokayata [materialists], were greatly radical in their views for they contented that the monarch held office only at the people’s pleasure.

MS 7.19. If (punishment) is properly inflicted after (due) consideration, it makes all people happy; but inflicted without consideration, it destroys everything

A king must care for the natural aspirations of his subjects irrespective of their religious and cultural beliefs; even if they are completely antithetical to his own

All smriti writers including Manu give prime place to acara [established conduct] in determining the appropriate dharma for diverse groups; even those outside the pale of caturvarnya, to the pasandas [heretics] and to republicans [ganas] They must be taken into account. [MS 1.118]  A king administering justice or consolidating his kingdom must see to it that the local customs are given safeguards and maintained. [MS 8.41,46]

Other important duties of the king is removal of the anti social elements or kantaka sodhana. The king should be impartial and punish those dear to him as he would do others [MS 9.307, Raguvamsa of Kalidasa 1.28]

ON TAXATION:

Manu recommends a king to be moderate in taxation, as the leech and calf and bee take their food little by little. [MS 7.129] He should tax in such a way that both, him and the his citizens prosper. This liberal taxation policy was also recommended by Katyayana [6^th century A.D] who says “the king is the lord of the lands but never of other kinds of wealth, therefore she should secure the sixth part of the fruits of land but not otherwise at all….along with it he may take his due share of fines and tolls.”

Manu enjoins a king to not tax men and women with physical disabilities like the blind, and the cripple, as also senior citizens [those over 70 years of age] He however, strongly urges the king to tax traders MS.127. Having well considered (the rates of) purchase and (of) sale, (the length of) the road, (the expense for) food and condiments, the charges of securing the goods, let the king make the traders pay duty

In contrast, Islamic kings used to tax close to ½-1/3^rd of the produce even in times of famines….Two classes cases are those of Alauddin Khilji and Mohammad Bin Tughlaq of the Delhi sultanate..

WAR AND PEACE

War is delightful to those who have no experience of it – Anonymous

War through the ages has been one of the most exalted instincts of man.

How far is war justified?. War, contends Heraclitus, is not mere injustice, chaotic violence; it is justice, although a violent justice, the only kind possible. But modern man hopes for elimination of war, for in war is destruction and desolation, the ruins of civilization. War cannot be totally set aside for as Will Durant says “Eternal vigilance is the price of civilization” The ideal is the acceptance of universal peace and goodwill amongst all nations, but it is a distant dream even in the current age. Yet, we must accept civilization has come a long way, for war is no more the preferred mode of settling rivalry and establishing supremacy…war is to be shunned…

It is in India, that peace in preference to war was cognized by the great seers like Manu over 2500 yrs ago. In this we find a giant leap for human civilization. Manu recommends winning over his foes by reconciliation, gifts; anything but fighting! [MS 7.198] As in war, victory is doubtful, a king should try to avoid war. [MS 7.199]The desire for power could be reconciled with the ideal of dharma as ahimsa by classifying them into certain categories. Kautilya classifies them as righteous conquerors, greedy conquerors, and demonic conquerors. The righteous seek only obeisance [Most ancient Indian kings like Harsha and Samudragupta would fall in this category], the greedy seek lands, wealth through loot and plunder, and the demonic in addition the vanquished king’s kin and women.

Similarly, the Mahabharata advises that conquests should be made on the basis of dharma. The Pandavas desired only submission and tribute or gifts from the conquered. [Sabha 26-31]

In Ashoka, we find a new concept of dharma – vijaya; victory without conquest. Borders as far as six hundred yojanas through Buddhist missionary conquests!

Some Marxist historians like Romila Thapara criticize the Geeta advocating war over peace. Yet, in the context of the Mahabharata, the Pandavas would have settled even for five villages, and the war is essentially that between the forces of righteousness and unrighteousness .As Sri Aurobindo fittingly concludes “We must remember that the Gita was composed at a time when war was even more than it is now a necessary part of human activity and the idea of its elimination from the scheme of life would have been an absolute chimera. The Gita proceeds from the acceptance of the necessity in Nature for such vehement crises and it accepts not only the moral aspect, the struggle between righteousness and unrighteousness, between the self-affirming law of Good and the forces that oppose its progression, but also the physical aspect, the actual armed war or other vehement physical strife between the human beings who represent the antagonistic powers.”

Kautilya clearly suggests a king to use any means to destroy the enemy. But Manu would have none of it. In Kautilya, we find worldly expediency. For Manu, dharma reigns supreme, and he lays down a code of war called dharma yuddha. [MS 7.90-94] according to which deceitful or poisonous arms should not be used, a foe in a disadvantageous position shall not be struck, one who has surrendered shall be given security, one fleeting, armless, non combatant, or engaged with another shall not be attacked. Ironically the rajputs followed such policies while dealing with the Islamic invaders as late as the 10-13^th centuries, and this must have been a significant reason contributing to their ultimate defeat.

In Kamarkanda’s Niti Shastra, of the 7-8^th century, a king is warned from plundering the defeated king’s subjects. Injured dharma verily slays! Thus, in India, wars did not carry destruction of conquered lands as a necessary by-product. The peasants, the traders and the aristocracy were usually left unmolested by the victor who sought only their obeisance. Megasthenes, the contemporary of Chandragupta Maurya testifies to the same. To quote “there are usages observed by the Indians which contribute to prevent the occurrence of famine among them; for whereas among other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil, and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighbourhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remainquite unmolested. Besides, they neither ravage an enemy's land with fire, nor cut down its trees”

It is a tribute to Manu’s prescience that he realizes that a king could despite pleas to uphold the sanctity of his office, descend into dictatorship, oppression and injustice. Manu upholds the right of citizens to kill such an unjust king without ado.

Sri Aurobindo recognizes this;

The legists provided for the possibility of oppression. In spite of the sanctity and prestige attaching to the sovereign it was laid down that obedience ceased to be binding if the king ceased to be faithful executor of the Dharma. Incompetence and violation of the obligation to rule to the satisfaction of the people were in theory and effect sufficient causes for his removal. Manu even lays it down that an unjust and oppressive king should be killed by his own subjects like a mad dog, and this justification by the highest authority of the right or even the duty of insurrection and regicide in extreme cases is sufficient to show that absolutism or the unconditional divine right of kings was no part of the intention of the Indian political system. As a matter of fact the right was actually exercised as we find both from history and literature. Another more peaceful and more commonly exercised remedy was a threat of secession or exodus which in most cases was sufficient to bring the delinquent ruler to reason. It is interesting to find the threat of secession employed against an unpopular monarch in the south as late as the seventeenth century, as well as a declaration by a popular assembly denouncing any assistance given to the king as an act of treason. A more common remedy was deposition by the council of ministers or by the public assemblies. The kingship thus constituted proved to be in effect moderate, efficient and beneficent, served well the purposes assigned to it and secured an abiding hold on the affections of the people. The monarchical institution was however only one, an approved and very important, but not, as we see from the existence of the ancient republics, an indispensable element of the Indian socio-political system

[The Renaissance in India, Page: 395]

MANU”S LEGAL CODE

Manu’s distinctive contribution to the theory of law and practice is the idea of relativity of law according to time and country. Thus, Manu maintains a distinction between the absolute law, which is dharma or truth, and relative law which is an attempt by man to express the absolute in this eternally changing dynamic plane. The success of such an endeavor would depend upon the manifest degree of dharma at the individual level of every varna. However to maintain a stringent dichotomy between the two as most modern civilizations have done; would cause a subtle derailing of law and order; conferring lawlessness by divorcing morality from law.

An eminent jurist like Prasanta Bihari Mukerjee finds it astonishing to find in so ancient a code like the Institutes of Manu the detailed descriptions of the forms of action in a court of law [MS 8.2-7]

In his court of justice, either sitting or standing, holding forth his right arm, unostentatious in his dress and ornaments, let the king every day, decide one after another, cases of suitors separately classified under eighteen forms of action by rules founded on local usages and codes of law. Some of them are recovery of debts, sale without ownership, deposit and pledge, resumption of gifts, non payment of wages, dispute between owner of cattle and shepherd, violence assault, violence on women, adultery, duties of man and wife, partition and inheritance, gambling and betting. That, in all such acts, scrupulously upholding the meritorious case was the norm can be gauged from the fact that in [MS 7.168] Manu declares null and void any transactions done through extraneous pressures or use of force!

Another enormous step towards civilization is distinguishing between gravity of crimes, and secondly the separation of civil and criminal law and their respective punishments. Civil crimes incur only fines, but not corporal punishment. In criminal law, the emphasis is on righteous dealings and not lax amoris [an eye for an eye as in Hammurabi’s code, the old testament, the quran] While critics point out the stringent corporal punishment meted out to criminals [i.e angaviccheda cutting off a limb] they ignore the clauses for penance [prayaschita], which replace punishment and thus, in effect provide a second chance for humanity. Moreover, Manu himself declares that corporal punishment is to be used as a last resort.

MS 7.129 Let him punish first by gentle admonition, afterwards by harsh reproof, thirdly by a fine, after that by corporal chastisement

Even in case of the mahapatakas [5 major sins -> Brahmins killings, adultery with a Guru’s wife, being an alcoholic, and associating with all the three kinds of men] Manu in at least one, i.e. Brahmin killings, provide means for penance which is the 12 yr vow as a brahmacharin [celibate] For minor sins, various penances including reciting a veda, or offering a gift of cows is prescribed. There is however, no penance for a rapist, despite rape not being explicitly mentioned as a major sin for the corporal punishment is to be carried out instantly!

For old or female sinners, the penance is reduced to half. Those who don’t follow penances out of heresy are to be socially ostracized. It is interesting to note that murder was not a major sin in the early dharma shastras including that of Manu. Yet, Manu anticipates the modern view of no crime for killing in self-defense [MS 7.439] or for protecting women and brahmanas!

Manu also ordains forgiving a liar, in case the truth could have grave repercussions, resulting in the death of a man, irrespective of caste/status/position in society!

MS 7.104. Whenever the death of a Sudra, of a Vaisya, of a Kshatriya, or of a Brahmana would be (caused) by a declaration of the truth, a falsehood may be spoken; for such (falsehood) is preferable to the truth

In Manu’s times, there seems to be no provision of lawyers and people used to argue their own cases. What is conspicuous is Manu striking such a profoundly rational note while settling the criteria for admission of witnesses. While it may be argued that Manu’s criteria are too utopian, expediency in accepting witnesses has often reduced the modern criminal procedure to a farce!

MS 7.64 Those must not be made witnesses who have an interest in the suit, nor familiar (friends), companions, and enemies (of the parties), nor (men) formerly convicted (of perjury), nor (persons) suffering under (severe) illness, nor (those) tainted (by mortal sin).

Manu concurs with the modern view that hostile witnesses are useless and are to be dropped

MS 7.78   What witnesses declare quite naturally, that must be received on trials; (depositions) differing from that, which they make improperly, are worthless for (the purposes of) justice

Manu appeals to witnesses to be truthful for the sake of their soul. In a somber note, he reasons that those lying on oath are destined to suffer for their actions since their conscience will never be at ease for the wrong they have done.

MS 7.83. 'By truthfulness a witness is purified, through truthfulness his merit grows, truth must, therefore, be spoken by witnesses of all castes (varna).

MS 7.84. 'The Soul itself is the witness of the Soul, and the Soul is the refuge of the Soul; despise not thy own Soul, the supreme witness of men.

MS 7.111. Let no wise man swear an oath falsely, even in a trifling matter; for he who swears an oath falsely is lost in this (world) and after death

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India License. swears an oath falsely is lost in this (world) and after death.