The corrected reading does away with the difficulty of an ingrammatical form or an obscure and unprecedented use, the dharma-rajan (instead of dharma-raja) which was the result of the former reading.

5. As I pointed out (ante, Vol. X. pp. 204, 205) the name Pushyamitra stands just where we would expect the father's name of the donor to be, on the analogy of other records. That receives confirmation from the passage in the Raghuvamsa cited above.1

The Reign of the Early Sungas

6. The Puranic datum that eight sons of Pushyamitra ruled at the same time (as shown in Vol. X above) seems to be confirmed by the following facts. The Purāņas say that Pushyamitra, king, will "make (others) rule" (kārayishyati vai rajyam-Pargiter's Text, p. 31).

Pushyamitras tu senanîr uddhṛitya sa Brihadṛatham, kārayishyati vai rājyam shaṭ-trimsati samā nṭipaḥ. (-Mt. & V.)

Push(ya) mitra-sutas chasṭau bhavishyanti samā nṛipāḥ. -Vayu. Evidently the eight sons as contemporary "kings" or rulers were the men whom Pushyamitra caused to rule over the empire, or through whom he ruled. This explains the so many unaccounted" mitra " rulers in coins 2 and inscriptions.

The Reign of the Sungas "in the Bharhat gateway inscription

7. The inscription of Vachhi-puta Dhanabhûti incised at the gateway of the Bharhut stûpa, now standing in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, dates the erection of the torana (gateway) "in the reign of the Sungas" (suganam raje). This is an

The analogy from Bhasa which I cited before is not exact, as there madhyama," the middle one", is with reference to "brother (implied). Madhyama" for madhyama brother, is used in some northern vernaculars even today.

2 One coin of Indramitra (now in the Patna Museum) was found in the Pataliputra excavations.

3 See plate and reading by Hultzsch in I A., XIV. 138.

unusual dating. The universal practice in ancient Indian epigraphs is to date a particular document or building by mentioning the reign of a particular king then reigning. But here we have the date as the reign of several (in the phural form) "Sungas."

8. This is explainable on the hypothesis of a family rule by several members, which is reported by the Puranas as interpreted above, in respect of the time of Pushyamitra and his sons. The Purāņas seem to be confirmed here by Dhanabhûti's inscription, in which we probably have a record of early Sunga time.1

Sunga Script

9. The Sungas both in inscription 2 and on coins used a script whose letter-forms are a different style, and more advanced than the letter-forms of the later Mauryas. In the Besnagar inscription of the reign of the later Sunga Bhágabhadra, we have the Maurya forms. There being thus more than one style of writing in vogue at one and the same time, the chronology of the records of the second century B.C. and thereabouts is not deducible merely from letter-forms. We have to bear in mind that there were at least two styles of writing in the Sunga times and the Sunga official style is not the same as in the Maurya times.

1 I may note here a correction. Hultzsch (1.A, XIV. 138-9) took the last line which is very short: Sila-kammamto cha upamna, to mean " and the end of the stone-work arose" (p. 139 n.) But kammanto has a definite, technical meaning-"craft ", "profession" (See Childers, p. 179): Silä-k° = "the stone craftsman ", "the stone-mason". It qualifies the succeeding Upamna' as the proper name of the mason or the architect of Dhanabhūti, who after finishing the record signed also his own nameike one of the stone-cutters of Asoka.

* At Pabhosă, Mathura, Gaya and Ayodhya.

IV. The Mughal Kingship

By R. P. Khosla, M.A., I.E.S.

In theory the Mughal king was under the holy law, but the latter was a region of speculation and vagueness when applied to the practical powers of the king. Law and political theory are considered in the Muslim world to be as much derived from divine revelation as is religious dogma. Islam did not recognise the institution of kingship to start with. It believed in the demcoracy of the people. Hence the absence of any particular rules in the holy Quran for the guidance of kings who are subject to the same laws as others. There is no distinction between the can on law and the law of the state. Law being of divine origin demands as much the obedience of the king as of the peasant. The king may be a mujtahid—an authority on law, but his legal decisions are limited to an interpretation of the law in its application to such particular problems as may from time to time arise. He is in no sense a creator of new legislation. It is the duty of a king to uphold the authority of the Islamic law and to keep himself within the four walls of it. The dignified rank of sultanate comes after the great law. But when applied to actual cases the purely theoretic character of the holy law is liable to prevent it from serving as an effective check on the sovereign authority.

In practice the Mughal kings exercised greater authority than that claimed by any kings in the west who based their claims to sovereignty on divine right. Though the Mughal kings were not above the holy law they enjoyed complete sovereignty in the state. The subjects were expected to submit to every ordinance issued by the monarch. The royal authority was not limited by any coronation oath which could, by a stretch of imagination, be interpreted as a compact between the ruler and the ruled. No forms of constitutional checks existed anywhere and the cry of popular rights was never heard. The power of the reiguing authority was all-embracing and there

was no distinction made between de facto and de jure sovereign. The royalty was wrapped up in a golden haze of sanctity and the king was veritably regarded as the shadow of God. Monarchy being a divinely ordained institution, obedience to the king was a religious as well as a political dogma. When Askari Mirza rebelled against Humayun he is said to have exclaimed one night while he was engaged in drinking wine, "Am not I a king, God's representative on earth?" Every Mughal king regarded himself as the vicegerent of God. His power was unconditioned by any constitutional restraints and he was the sole interpreter of his will. The doctrines of the right of resistance, popular sovereignty, and the merely official character of kingship were meaningless terms.

The position of the monarch was further strengthened by the secular nature of the Mughal state. Though the holy law was theoretically supreme, the ulama, who were the only authoritative exponents of the holy law, were never allowed to become supreme in the state. The dangerous character of their power was easily recognised by the Mughal kings who kept them under strict control and thus prevented the creation of a state within a state. Though theoretically the Quranic law was the only law recognised and all civil law was subordinate to it, the king's wish was the real law in practice. Though the king was expected to make the precepts of the sacred law effective in every department of administration, in actual practice the wheels of the state machinery moved according to the royal will and royal will alone. The secular power claimed and enjoyed complete supremacy. The Mughal kings always considered it dangerous for the state to give the spiritual power a free hand in political matters, as that would have fettered the action of the state in a thousand ways and clogged the wheels of the governmental machinery. It was unsafe to make the ulama the ultimate arbiters of political action The Mughals like their predecessors the Pathans were ever jealous of clericalism. The ecclesiastical organisation was never allowed to be strong enough to put forward an effective claim to

8

2 Res. J.

control and direct the action of the king. It might be used as a convenient instrument by the king as the court of ecclesiastical commission was used by the Tudors and the Stuarts in England, but it could never act as a check upon the royal authority. The ulama were held in great esteem, but they were never allowed any hand in determining the policy of the state. There was never any danger of an imperium in imperio. No synod of divines or doctors of law was powerful enough to act as a check on the king's will.

The "fakihas" or Muslim legists never became a power in the land. Although they were treated with deference, and the decisions of the courts of justice were as a rule given effect to, they (fakihs) were never allowed to direct the state policy. They might be full of clerical pride, but they never had the courage to denounce the action of the king. Even under Akbar and Jahangir, the orthodox clergy, who must have disliked the heterodox views of those two kings, could never have the temerity to denounce them publicly as irreligious, at any rate their denouncements were never of any avail. They were powerless to fan the flame of discontent or increase the bitterness of the orthodox section of the population. Spain the "fakihs" bad instigated many insurrections against the Arab rulers, and as priests of Islam they wielded so great an influence that they succeeded in weakening the Arab empire in that country. But in India they could never raise their voice effectively against the liberal interpretation of the laws and the general tolerance of the Mughal kings.

In

It is true justice was administered according to the Muhammadan law and the kazis administered that law in conformity with a code-the result of accumulated decisions based on the Quran, but the Mughal king was the highest court of appeal, and the decisions of the kazis were liable to be revised by him. It meant that the intellect of the king became the final interpreter of law just as it was the sole source of legislation. The court of justice consisted of a kazi and a mir-i-adal or lord justice. The kazi conducted the trial and