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Monarchy of the Epic Age
127
In social life, such discord produces evil and to avoid such discords, punishments are unavoidable, since thereby the normality of relations is restored. In political life, it is the duty of the king to look to the normality of relations and as such by administering punishment he restores social equilibrium. His main duty is to enforce the laws which exist apart from his authority.
The dialogue between the two brothers throws enough light on this matter. Some further ideas, too, are represented by their dialogue. The younger who had suffered from mutilation, feared that the elder brother might hurl his anathema on the king for this and ask him to forgive the latter. The elder sage, however, smiled and explained to him that punishment had cured both of them from sin. 30 Again when the latter had regained his hands by a miracle, he wondered why his purification had not taken place prior to his punishment and that the king by inflicting punishment had freed himself from the sin arising out of the miscarriage of justice together with the man who committed the wrong.31
The above conception of law was thus not merely sacredotal, but had a strong aesthetic back ground as in the case of the Greek ideal of law. Unlike the Roman idea, the multitude had nothing to do with its formulation or interpretation. As the Hallenes regarded law as the emanation of the juridical will of the gods, so, in India, law was the part and pascel of the great principles guiding the universal phenomena. The multitude had nothing to do with it and its interpretation depended on the rational faculty of the wise and learned in the sacred traditions. 32 As such the Brāhmans had the best claim for legal interpretation, while the administration of law was vested in the king. The idea of such a concordat existing between the Brahmaņa and the king (Ksatriya ruler) was initiated from the age of Brāhmanas 33
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. Vasiştha Dharmasūtra. Chap. XI, 1-2 2. "Nāma cāsya varjayedrājñaḥ."
Gautama Dharmasūtra Chap, XVI. 4. "Tyajet pitaram rājaghātakam"
Gautama Dharmasutra XX.I. Catvāro varṇāh putriņaḥ sākṣiṇaḥ syuranyatra. Srotriyarājanyapravrajitamānuşahinebhyah..
Gautama Dharmasatra,
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