Author: Subrata Kumar Jana
DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.70798/PP/030200023
Abstract: This paper undertakes a textual-hermeneutic study of Rājadharma — the Sanskritic doctrine of righteous kingship — as it is constructed in the two great itihāsa texts of classical India, the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, read alongside the foundational articulations of Dharmaśāstra (Manusmṛti) and Arthaśāstra (Kauṭilya). Rājadharma, etymologically the dharma proper to the rājan, is examined not as a narrow code of statecraft but as an integrated ethical ontology in which artha (material welfare) and daṇḍa (coercive power) are subordinated to dharma (righteousness) as the ultimate ground of legitimate sovereignty. Drawing on primary Sanskrit verses — including Manu’s rājadharma-praṇayana (Manusmṛti 7.1–3), the Utathya-Gītā of the Śāntiparvan (Mahābhārata 12.90–91), Kauṭilya’s dictum on the identity of royal and public welfare (Arthaśāstra 1.19.34), and the celebrated description of Rāma-rājya in the Yuddhakāṇḍa (Rāmāyaṇa 6.128.99–100) — the study argues that both epics converge in positioning the king as dharmasya goptā, the guardian rather than the author of righteousness, while diverging in narrative method: the Rāmāyaṇa idealises Rājadharma through the exemplary figure of Rāma as maryādāpuruṣottama, whereas the Mahābhārata, through Bhīṣma’s discourse to Yudhiṣṭhira in the Rājadharmānuśāsanaparvan, interrogates Rājadharma dialectically amid the moral crises of āpaddharma and the Kali-saṃdhi. The paper further situates this classical vocabulary — prajāpālana, daṇḍanīti, yogakṣema, satya, ahiṃsā — in relation to contemporary concerns of ethical and constitutional governance, cautioning against anachronistic equivalence while identifying genuine points of resonance. The study concludes that Rājadharma, in both epics, is not merely political science (rājanīti) but a lived ethical vocation in which the sovereignty of the state and the moral self-discipline of the sovereign are rendered inseparable.
Keywords: Rājadharma; dharmaśāstra; Mahābhārata; Rāmāyaṇa; daṇḍanīti; prajāpālana; ethical governance; Rāma-rājya; Śāntiparvan; Arthaśāstra.
Page No: 191-202