ANDREW HUXLEY

THE BUDDHA AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

Collins’s annotated translation of the AggaZa-suttu (hereafter AS)

in the 1993 volume of this journal restores the text to life. To those,
like myseif, who do not read Pali he has pointed out indeterminacies
of meaning which previous translations had disguised. He shows that
at certain key points the Pali text is ~biguous and offers us enough
linguistic info~atiun to choose our own preferred reading. Over-
entrenched pusitiuns defended by heavy artillery have in recent years
led the debate on the meaning of AS into a dead end, Collins’ annotations
open several possible escaperoutes and offer us much food for thought.
But his final flourish - the second appendix at pp. 387-9 headed ‘Is
there a ‘social contract’ in AS?’ - spills further mud on an already
murky issue. The first two sections of this note give reasons why, in
relation to these three pages alone, we should bury Collins rather than
praise him. In the remaining sections I try to be more constructive. I
offer a lawyer’s reaction to AS along with speculations about the legal
and political context against which the IBuddha delivered his satirical
barbs.

CWLD THE BUDDHA HAVE USED THE PHRASE SOCIAL CONmACT?

We do not know much about North Indian law during the Buddha’s
lifetime, but the limited evidence suggests that, as in all other contem-
porary legal systems, there was no general conception of contract. It
knew instead a wide range of discrete legal institutions all of which
(to a modem western analyst} depended on the idea of ‘promise’.
These included hire of specialist skills, buying and selling of livestock,
alienation of land, deposit of goods for safe-keeping and engagement
to marry. If the Buddha had wanted to insert a legal metaphor into
his account of the origin of kingship, if he had wanted to explain a
nebulous political abstraction in terms of a familiar legal concept, he
would have had to compare the king’s relations with his subjects to
one of these particular contracts. Should we think of Mahasammata as
a hired specialist, like the laundry man, the doctor or the prostitute?
Should he be seen as a left-luggage attendant, accepting the people’s
sovereignty on deposit? Or was he viewed as the fiance of his people,
408 ANDREW HUXLEY

espoused to a marriage that could never be entirely consummated? Had

the Buddha used one of these legal metaphors we would have been
unimpressed. The phrase ‘social contract’ weaves a beguiling spell over
the intellect which is lacking in coinages such as ‘social prostitution’
or ‘social laundrette’. Is it pedantic to insist that because the Buddha
would not have used the phrase, we should avoid applying it to him? In
my discipline of legal history it is not. The use of metaphors like ‘social
contract’ provides us with important data. Their explicit appearance
in discussions of legitimation intended for a general audience demon-
strates how far legal te~hnic~ities have infiltrate popular speech and
shows the extent of popular knowledge about law. For centuries after
the rediscovery of the Digest European lawyers laboured to produce
a general concept of contract. In Shakespeare’s lifetime the general
public still talked in terms of debt and trespass.That Hobbes could use
contractual language (the phrase ‘covenant of every man with every
man’) and be understood by his contemporaries helps us pinpoint the
moment of change.
Another argument against the anachronistic use of ‘social contract’
is that it makes the comparison of legal metaphors more difficult. Such
comparisons are commonplace within European culture. That Locke use:
the metaphor of a trust while Hobbes uses the metaphor of a contract has
long been recognised as p~point~g impo~~t differences between their
theories. Hobbes emphasises that the terms of the agreement between
king and people is for them to decide, provided only that the king can
preserve the peace. By using contract as his model, he downplays the
revolutionary implications - not every breach of a contract entails the
right of recission. Locke emphasisesthat the terms of the agreement are
partly predetermined: ‘natural rights’ constrain the possibilities, just as
the law of trusts constrains agreement to a greater extent than the law
of contract. By using the trust model, Locke upgrades the revolutionary
implications - any breach of trust by the trustee renders him liable to
be deposed by a Chancery judge. Since they drew their metaphors from
the same legal system, Hobbes and Locke could at least understand
each other. To talk of a social contract in cultures unfamiliar with the
18th century common law of obligations is a high-risk strategy. If I
tried to explain the Chinese ‘mandate of heaven’ by appealing to the
post-classical Roman Law on mandate, I would be rightly derided. To
apply the phrase ‘social contract’ to non-western cultures (or, indeed,
to European cultures before the 17th century) is to risk the same fate.
The social contract is a political theory which uses a legal metaphor.
Part of the attraction of the metaphor for Hobbes was its novelty: had
he been writing now he might hve deYt?loped a ‘quantum theory” ;or
a ‘chars theory’ of the origins of the state. For Hobbes and Locke the
legal referent in the metaphor was creative: the details of the law of
contract suggested new ways of thinlcing about society. Let us call them
‘strong social contract’ theorists. Since the Buddha lacked a general
theory of contract he could not have been a strong social contract
theorist. The rn~y commen~tors who refer to AS as incorporating a
social ~au~ct must be using it in a deter sense which drops the legal
referent ~~o~ether and substitutes a vague not& uf ‘pop&r consent
tu the eme~e~ce of the state’. But Wobbes(16%: 641) is explicit: his
tbeary is about more than papul~ consent:
“This is mwe than Consent or Concord; it is a real Q&y of them all, in onb 8ri&
the same person, made by Covenant of every man with every man . . . ’

I3y all means let us call AS a “popular consent’ political theory, But if
we call it a social contract, even a “weak social contract’, our attention
will be misdirected. The contract metzrphorportrays the bond between
subject and state as legalistic, as absolute and unb~~able:
‘Of a sue nature is the suit you follow,
yet in such rule that the Venetian law
earmot spry y3u as you do Qmceed.”~~~a~e~~ Ifm TV i 178)

while a popular consent theory clays it as mutable and ~~~~~~~~~t.

Using W&s’s terms, the so&I contract implies f~~-ra~io~a~ author-
ity? while popular consent implies Waditlonal and charismatic autharity.
The former is a historical development out of the latter. Evans-Pritchard
talks of:
‘. . . the $~b~ti~~ioRof a rational economic system for a system in which exchange of
goods was not a mechanical but .a maral ~sa~~o~* bringing about and rnai~~~~~~
human, pe~~ual m]at~onsh~Qs behveen ~nd~v~du~sand groups.’ (Mauss 1925: ix)

This subs~~~un was taking place iu Hortb I&la between about $00 IX
and 308 AD, The Buddha Wed durirzg a period when the ~b~~g~o~
to match a gift with a return gift was nut a simply expressed IegaI
~~l~g~~i~~ but a complex and highly ~~o~~is~ equation:
“The gift is thus something that must be given, that must be received and that is, at
the same time, dangerous to accept. . . +The ~NUYXand intention of the contmcting
parties and th@nature of the thing given are indivisible,’ (Mauss 1925: 58-9)
If the king is supported by popular consent, it is becausehe has earned it
by generosity to his people and by the force of his own personality, By
the time ~~~~~~~~ was written, what had applied to all contracts now
applied sole& to the relationship between king and subjects. Tibia
guopesthe wurds of Paul Mus:
Mauss’ legal ~t~ro~logy links these bedim developments to Melane-
Sian and Pacific North Western systems of gift-exchange. When we
talk of political theory in cultures where contract has not acquired the
imperso~~ity of a market transaction, we could avoid confusion and
honour Mauss’ classic work by speaking of a ‘social potlatch’,

We might justify talking of a Buddhist social contract by invoking

~l~si~~~t~~ convenience. The ~g~rn~~t would go like this: ‘We have
a wel~~d~~~edcategory called social cormact into which certain western
theories from the 17th century onwards can be placed. AS, despite being
non-western and two millennia earlier, fits the category so well that
convenience outweighs anachronism,” I disagree with the first premise.
The social contract is not a well-defined category of political theory.
Being toId that so-and-so is a social c~~~~t~i~ barely gets us started
in u~derst~di~g his theory. Is the cantract a h~othe~~~ event taking
place behind a veil of ignores (~~1s) or a real event in the pre-
~#~urnbi~ history of the Americas ~~~e)~ If the king breaks his
side of the contract, should the people rise up in justified rebellion
(Rousseau) or content themselves with the thought that life without a
king would be even worse (Hobbes)? To which state institutions are
the people consenting? Are they agreeing to a sanctioning mechanism
for pre-existent laws (Hobbes, more or less’) or to a code of legal rules
wbieh may net be accompanied by a sanctioning mechanism (Glaucon
in 7% ~~~~~~~&)? These questions (and it is easy enough to ask more2)
are not ~o~~e~~ with the paint scheme and trim in which a theory
is turned ant - they go to its essence. My general claim, therefure, is
that the soeM contra@ is too vague a term even for the discussion of
western politic&l theory- My specific claim is that in relation to early
India it is particularly inappropriate.
To talk of a Buddhist social contract implies that the Hindu myths
about the origin of kingship do not invoke notions of popular consent to
rno~~~hy~ Ilad it been otherwise we wauld talk of ‘shared early Indnm
concepts’, And indeed the ~~~~~~~~~~~legend (at XII.59) emphassises
divine will rather than human consent: it is Vishnu and the ancient
rishis who appoint the first km,.0 If we judge ancient Indian politicaI
theory in terms of how near it came to i~ven~ng democracy, we have
now completed our task: ‘Popular consent is closer to democracy than
divine will; Buddhism is better than Iiinduism. Q.E.D.’ But we might
prefer to judge ancient Indian political theory in its own terms: how
successful were the various solutions put forward to its overriding
constitutional problem? In India, as in China and in almost all the
ancient world, political theory and constitutional law dealt with one
single issue, Given the political preeminence of the king (or emperor
or sultan), who can restrain him from evil and encourage him to do
good? The Buddha put it most succinctly - ‘Who is the raja’s raja?’
- half a mille~ium before Juvenal’s better known version (A III 14Q;
cf. Juvenal ‘Satires’ vi 347). And to this question the ~~~~~~~~~~
legend offers an in~guing answer: the ancient r&his kill the tyrant
Vena and create P@su the new king, laying down the conditions.under
which he will be allowed to rule. One group of citizens, in other words,
acts as ‘guarantors of the constitution”: they are Supreme Court and
Army combined since they both judge and enforce complaints against
the king. Assuming that these rishis represent the Brahmin caste, the
myth amounts to a flexing of Brahmin muscle in the king’s face. AS
approaches the problem differently. Rather than setting up a body to
force the king to do good, we ensure that a king is chosen who will
never want to do evil. ~~~s~rna~a is a Platonic ~~losopher-king,
and the very word %%ja means ‘He brings joy to others according to
Dhamma’(#21)3. I shall return to this issue, since the Buddha’s position
is more complex than I have indicated. My point for the time being is
this. If, with Collins, we are looking for ‘justifications of defiance to a
king perceived to be unjust’ (p. 3&Q),then the Muh&harutu, which is
not even a weak social contract myth, gives us stronger justifications
than AS, which is. The Mahiibhiiruta gives us a precedent for armed
rebellion, while AS leaves us to infer what to do with a king who has
failed to meet Dhamma’s high standards. Social contract analysis, even
in its weak form, misses the point of the Indian material

‘THE BUDDHA WAS ONLY JOKING

The first two sections have outlined why I am unhappy with Collins’
‘conceptual issue of what kind of contract the AS story envisages”
(p. 387) and why I would prefer to ask ‘what limitations on royal
power does the AS story propose?’ I hope, nonetheless, that he and
I can agree on the general nature of the enterprise in which we are
engaged. It is, is it not, to establish what precisely is ‘Buddhist’ about
AS. How did the ~~~~rnata myth serve to advance the Buddha’s
412 ANDREW HUXLEY

grand plan? For Gombrich the myth is a shaggy-dog story, setting up a

punch-line that punctures Brahmin pretensions. It fits into the Buddha’s
grand plan as yet another powerful attack on the pretensions of caste.
The origin of kingship is simply one facet of the origin of varna and ‘the
positive statements in the myth are . . . not meant to be taken seriously.’
For Tambiah the humour in the myth does not indicate ‘take none of
this seriously’ so much as ‘A joke or two will help my audience get the
point’. Behind the mockery directed at Brahmanical beliefs Tambiah
finds a countervailing Buddhist account. One aspect of the Buddha’s
grand plan, then, is the provision of political and constitutional ideas. I
am unclear where Collins stands between these extremes. On the one
hand, the serious intent of AS ‘was as moral commentary rather than
as a “myth of origins = charter for society” ’ (p. 3 14). On the other
hand Mahasammata is a sufficiently serious invention that we should
ask what kind of social contract his appointment represents.
These problems in interpreting AS are caused by the serious impli-
cations of humour. Gombrich assumes that in a text which is primarily
a satire on Brahmins, no elements of the text are to be taken seriously.
But we are surely not supposed to laugh at the 10 commandments in #5
or the analysis of the effects of karma in #27-#30? Collins invokes the
alliance of levity and seriousness, but it is rather the alternation of levity
and seriousness which scores the biggest laughs. I picture the Buddha
expounding #18 to #20 absolutely deadpan. Vasettha and Bharadvaja are
walking a step behind him nodding their heads and trying to remember
it all. ‘Wow!’ mutters Bharadvaja, sotto vote, ‘the Sakyamuni’s really
getting stuck into the human sciences tonight! ’ And then the Buddha,
equally deadpan, moves on to #21-#25 and knocks them dead. As the
howls of laughter die down and as the audience pick themselves up off
the ground, Vasetma asks ‘By the way, Blessed One, were you serious
about that Mahasammata stuff?’ To which the Buddha replies. . . . What
we really need is an analysis of the N.E. Indian sense of humour in
the 5th century BC graded on a scale from crude buffoonery to subtle
irony, with appendices showing regional variations among Sakyans,
Magadhans, male adult celibates and enlightened beings. Failing that,
it may be that we are trapped in the relativism against which Gombrich
(1992: 159-161) warns us. Given our ignorance about the context in
which AS was delivered (and I include the legal and political ideas of
the time as well as what was considered funny), the text itself may have
no objective or inherent meaning for us, though it did when preached
to Vasetfha and Bharadvaja. But the last thing on my mind is to join
Gombrich and Collins in their romps through literary theory. Only by
 THE BUDDHA AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 413

piecing together more of AS’ context can we hope to retrieve its objec-
tive meaning, and in this endeavour both Gombrich, with his Vedic
parodies, and Collins, with his substrate of Vinaya imagery, have made
notable contributions.

D@QA AND MAhTJ IN THE AGG&fiA-SUlTA

Collins describes this question of context, of the shared 6th century

cultural vocabulary and repertoire of stories, as ‘one of the most difficult
but most pressing tasks of Indology’ (p. 311). I would add that the
legal and political context has scarcely been examined at all: legal
historians of India speculate airily about the Vedic period and pontificate
knowledgeably about developments from the 1st century BC onwards.
But the 6th to the 2nd century BC, when India’s cities and states were
forming, remains undiscussed. Perhaps I can usefully act as an agent
provocuteur by capering about on the Indologists’ turf making wild
assertions about early Hindu law. As I understand it, the composition
of the dharmaiiWra -s, and Munusm~ti in particular, between 100 BC
and 100 AD, was Hindu orthodoxy’s reaction to the unwelcome legal
developments that accompanied the rise of cities, empires and writing.
Whole areas of law which the B&mans thought should be under their
control had slipped into royal control. And this royal law was open
to Buddhist influence, since kings and Buddhists shared an affinity
with cities and with long distance trade. The ‘conservative counter-
revolution’ of resurgent Hinduism, as Selvanayagam (1992: 59) calls it,
was so successful that we no longer possess any complete royal code
of laws from the 3rd century BC. But portions of this corpus have been
preserved in Buddhist texts (especially in Vinaya commentaries), in
the ASokan inscriptions and in the present text of the Arthai~stra. The
Buddhist influences that can occasionally be discerned in Munusmfli
itself (Hopkins 1923: 244, Glucklich 1982: 59) are presumably the
result of its incorporation of such arthasastric material. To discover
the legal and political theories prevalent during the Buddha’s youth
we must peer through this comparatively unknown law of kings and
Buddhists into the terra incognita beyond. Two names (or Demi-Gods,
or abstractions) stare back at us from this unknown land: those of Danda
and Manu. Da&a, says Sen-Gupta (1953: 38) ‘meets us at the very
threshold of early law’; the whole concept, says Derrett (1976: 602),
‘is certainly ancient’. Manu’s antiquity is more problematic. P.V. Kane
(1968: 1.1: 306) tells us that in the l$g-veda, which as oral texts must
precede the 6th century, Manu usually stands for humanity in general,
414 ANDRFWHUXLEY

but is occasionally used to identify an i~dividu~ sage. The texts which

link Mamr as first king and Manu as first promulgator of law cannot be
proved to be older than the Buddha. Five centuries later we find Manu
legends edited into the Sanskrit written compendia. The Mahcibhtirata
distinguishes Manu Svayambhuva (the author of dharma&tra) from
Pr~cetasaManu (the author of artha,C&~ra). The Supreme Being, it
says, composed 100,000 Slokas on dharma, which Manu Svayambhuva
promulgated; Iater USana and Brhaspati composed SLtras based on
Manu. Kautilya’s A~~~~~~~~~ identifies the first king as Manu the
Vaivasvata.It mentions Usana and Brhaspati as the founders of schools
of law equally as ~restigiuus as Manu’s school. But did these Manu
legends circulate widely as oral texts in the 6th century BC? I shall
assume that they did, and that the names Da@a and Manu are as much
as we know of the pre-Buddhist context in which the Buddha preached
AS.
Neither Da@a nor Manu is mentioned by name in AS. The question,
then, is whether it is helpful to think of AS as a sermon preached against
them - an An&Da$a and Anti-Manu sub&z.Ghtcklich makes a strong
case for Da@a as the link between science and social theory:
In sum, Ra@a is the symbol for the instrumental role of chaos and violence in
the world: both in the body politic and in the cosmos as a whofe . . .his is . . . the
ins~ment~ force that makesfarming, ruling, sacrificing and even marriage efficacious.
(1988: 122f

We flatter our local political arrangements (the microcosm) by linking

them to global processes (the macrocosm). In Europe we think of such
linkage as appealing to ‘natural law’, but I hasten to add that this term
is even less useful for comparative purposes than ‘social contract’,
Pre-Buddhist India thought of Dat@a as the breaking of the egg which
makes the omelette possible. It is the act of creative violence which
operates as the motor both of cosmic cycles in the natural world and
of cycles of crime and punishment in the social world. In the social
world it is the king who wields the big stick of state p~ishment~ Is
this compatible with the virtue of non-violence {ahimsa )? If a pre-
Buddhist king was concerned about ordering the infliction of a violent
punishment, he could shuffle responsibility onto Danda: ‘I’m a nice
guy, as you all know. It is the demi-God Danda, acting through me,
who is responsible.’ Brahmans developed a special ritual to allay any
doubts that the king himself might feel:
During the royal consecration sacrifice (RSjasoya),after the king has had the dice
cast in his hand, they . , . silently strike him with sticks (Da@af on the back - by
beating him with sticks they guide hi safely over judicial punishment (~a~~abhad~~:
 THE BUDDHA AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 415

whence the king is exempt from punishment’ (SB 5.4.4.7). . . . By being struck, the
king becomes adadya - free of punishment, despite the intrinsic violence of his
office . . . . The Rajastiya establishes here the paradigmatic identification of king and
Da@a. . . . The result is stated in the Manusmrti and other texts which assert that
the king is the embodiment of Danda. (Glucklich 1988: 109-111)

We can read AS as offering kamma as an alternative to Damla. As Marx

converts Hegel’s idealism into materialism, so the Buddha converts the
mythological Danda into the scientific process of kamma, understood as
‘cause and effect’. It is kamma which explains each stage of the cosmic
cycle described in #lO to #19. It is kamma which organises heaven and
hell, good and bad rebirths, as the just deserts for a human life, and the
Buddha emphasises that it operates untainted by considerations of caste
(#27-#30). At the political level, incipient humans know just enough
to mimic the operation of kamma by appointing Mahasammata to
wield the stick of punishment (#20). But Mahasammata, unlike the pre-
Buddhist kings, has no escape from the consequences of inflicting violent
punishment. In Duroiselle’s profound words: ‘. . . tout acte de violence,
si justifiable soit-il, a sa rdtribution’ (1905: 149). This is not spelt out
in AS itself, but it is made clear enough in the Mtigapakkhu jcitaka (Ja.
#538). Nor does the Buddha offer any coronation ceremonies to rival
the Rajasuya. Possibly this is hinted at in the name ‘Mahasammata’: a
‘Great Elect’ king appointed by the people stands in implicit contrast
to a ‘Divine King’ anointed by the Brahmans.4
If Mahasammata is the ‘Great Uncrowned’ prototype of kingship, what
is his relationship to Mar-m the first king and law-giver of pre-Buddhist
myth? Medieval Sri Lanka, apparently drawing on Dhammapala’s
Vimanavatthu commentary, regarded them as identical: Manu Vaivasvata
was Mahasammata’s surname (Geiger 60: 112; cp. Malalasekera 38:
566). Has the commentary tradition got it wrong again, or is it explaining
another of the Buddha’s jokes? I believe that the legend of Manu the
first king and law giver was sufficiently well-known to the Buddha’s
contemporaries that Mahasammata the first king would be recognised
as a parody of him. ‘Big Cheese who Got the Job’ or ‘Great Civil-
Servant’ is the Buddha’s jocular reference to Manu, as we might refer
to Adam as ‘Great Ancestor who Lost a Rib’. This identification sheds
light on a crux in #18. Collins explains on p. 369 that mariytida can be
translated either as ‘a boundary between fields’ or as ‘a set of rules’.
The sentence he translates as ‘Let us now divide up the rice and set
up boundary-lines’ could equally well mean ‘Let us now divide up
the rice and agree to a set of rules’. This is where Manu’s code of
laws has got to. In the Buddha’s satire on the Manu legend, the first
king is appointed by the people rather than by God, and the first set
416 ANDRJ3W HUXLEY

of laws is agreed by the people rather than promulgated by the king.

Social contract enthusiasts will be delighted that this reading reveals
two social contracts for the price of one. #18, as Collins expiains,
marks the triumph of settled intensive agriculture over hunter-gathering
and slash-and-burning. In the first social contract the rice-farmers get
together to divide the productive land between them and agree a set of
rules on ownership, theft and inheritance. Tbis is the Platonic type of
social contract (laws but no suctions):
The pain of being hurt by someonestronger outweighs the pleasure in hurting someone
weaker. People who had experienced both agreed neither to commit injustice nor
tolerate it, and this is the beginning of legislation and contracts between men. . . , But
anyone strong enough to break the contract with impunity would be mad not to do
so. (‘Republic’ 358E459B)

and in #19 the disadvantagesbecome obvious. With laws but na specialist

law-enforcer the whole community must share in the bad kamma
engendered by punishment. As Collins points out, accusation and
punishment are listed as evils along with stealing and lying, The
solution is to appoint ~~~s~rna~ as a specialist law-enforcer. He is
‘to criticise, accuse and banish’ or, to invoke the word that the Buddha
seems deliberately to have avoided, he is to wield Da&a, the rod
of punishment. #20 gives us the second, Hobbesian, social contract:
Mahasammata the great elect and Leviathan the great fish-monster are
both avatars of Manu, the primal punisher.

HOW DOES AS FIT INTO THE BUDDHA’S GRAND PLAN?

AS is a myth which explains the origin of kingship in terms of a devolu-

tion from superhuman to merely human, I-Iow does it fit into the Buddha’s
grand plan? At this stage we must widen the ambit of discussion to
include AS’ neighbour in the Pali recension the Cukkavuttisz7hamidu
sum (hereafter CSS). CSS describes the further devolution of human
society into a ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ existence which
culminates in a ~~~~~~~~~i~~ cu~ttra ~rnne~and a new social contract
between the few survivors. Tbis is followed by the birth of Metteyya,
the next Buddha, emphasising that together AS and CSS describe a
full cycle of history. Far in the past our ancestors were ‘made of mind,
feeding on rapture, providing their own light’ (#lo). Far in the future our
descendantswill have a life expectancy of 10 years, get married at the
age of 5 and kill each other with whatever they can lay their hands on
(GSS #18-##2l). Wedged precariously in the present, we humans inhabit
a chronological “Middle Earth’, We admit, reluctantly, that we are not
 THE BUDDHA AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 417

immortal. In these suttas the Buddha reminds us that impermanence

extends from our lives to our social institutions and to the definition
of our species. The suttas fit into the grand plan as an illustration of
impermanence. But they also contain a specific message about how the
process of cause and effect can be halted. AS explains how kingship
inevitably emerges through the scientific processes of kamma. Sentient
beings will sooner or later get greedy, and will set off, as a kammic
consequence, a downward spiral that can only be halted by appointing
a king. CSS emphasises that the appointment of a king is only a tem-
porary palliative. The downward spiral will continue unless the king
can act as the perfect embodiment of dhamma. To label such a king
as a constitutional monarch who reigns ‘with dhamma as his overlord’
(A i 109) is only half the story. A cakkavatti king, the only kind who
can stem humanity’s downward spiral, must be as enlightened about
cause and effect as a Buddha. Such kings may have existed in human
history, but they have hardly been common. Humanity’s further descent
towards self-destruction is, therefore, inevitable. Gombrich (1988: 84)
finds this pessimism inconsistent with the rest of the Buddha’s grand
plan and regards CSS as either apocryphal or heavily interpolated. To
me it illustrates the combination of suffering and impermanence, two
of the three conditions which characterise existence, whether or not a
Buddha has appeared in this world.
Can we go any further? Was the provision of constitutional law and
political philosophy part of the Buddha’s grand plan? Did he make any
contribution to solving the ancient world’s ‘problem of total power’
(Gokhale 1966: 20)? Gombrich answers all these questions in the
negative:
Buddhism produced no parallel to the execution of Charles I; and the reason for that
is yet again the reservation of its higher practice to monks and nuns. (1988: 86)

I entirely agree that the main thrust of the Buddha’s grand plan is to
signpost the path to nibbtinu and to prod us lazy and deluded creatures
a few steps further along it. But omniscient Buddhas get asked to
explain matters that, strictly speaking, are irrelevant to the pursuit of
enlightenment. When he finds a lay supporter having trouble with a
haughty daughter-in-law, the Buddha steps in and sorts it out (A iv 91).
When King Pasenadi drops in for a chat after a hard day in court, the
Buddha provides a sympathetic ear to his complaints (S i 74; A v 67; S
i 89) and meditates afterwards on their implications (S i 115). Kingship
was, after all, his family trade, and the temptation to divert his energy
into showing how to do it properly must have been hard to resist.
Indeed the best argument for Gombrich’s position is that in the tenth
of the Mtira ~~~~u-s (S i 115) the Buddha resists M&r-a’stempta~ou
‘to exercise goyem~Ge ~ghteously, without smi~ng nor letting others
slay’. It was not part of the grand plan that the Buddha should give
a personal demanstmtion of ~~~i~ kingship. But lecturing kings
on the subject of dhammic kingship is another matter. The Buddha%
grzmd plan was, in my view, a triptych: the main panel preaches the:
pursuit of nibbana to those prepared to make the sacrifices of celibacy
and homelessness.Two side panels offer instruction appropriate to the
laity and to kings. To lay supporters be gave advice ranging frum moral
instruction (I3 iii 189) through praczical marriage guidance counselling
(A iv 91; A ii 57) tt, m madysis of busynessfailures (A ii 249). To
kings he preached the r~ja~~rna~ the constitutions law, which we
can snmm~ise as folluws.
When he agreed to take the community’s burden of punishment onto
his own back, Mahaammata made a Faustian bargain. For present gain
(the rice-tax) he risked horrific kammic consequences in the futme.
That he is punishing on behalf of the state is no excuse: in the eye of
kamma state violence is no better than private violence. A Buddhist king
only has two options. The first is to sit back and enjoy his brief span
of glury. It was the merit a~~rn~lated in ~~ev~o~slives that got hii
the &one: the demerit acquired while on the throne merely gives the
wheel a f~her spin. The second option is tu aspire to be a ~~avatti.
The necessary ~relimin~ Step is to mle in aGGCXd%IGeW&h alms,
paying special attention to equality of treatment (sama>. Thereafter
the king must engage in a programme of mental discipline leading
towards the acquisition of the cakkavatti’s penetrating vision into the
complexities of cause and effect. While the monk’s mental discipline
is defined by vz’nczy~~ and meditation, the king’s mental discipline is
the avoida.nceof the four ag&. Only when he has purged himself of
subjectivity, when he has learned to operate at the centre of the social
world witbo~t greed, anger, fear or favour, will he gain the insight
that a cakkavatti needs, When his actions and policies are the result of
utterly objective doubt processes,then his subjects will be inspired to
good behaviour by his example. Courts and punishments will become
redundant,
What kind of political philosophy is this? It recalls Marx by the way it
situates the contemporary state on a contimmm extending backwards and
forwards through time. It recalls Mao Zedong by its refusal to distin~~isb
between state and private violence: all power comes through the barrel
of a gun, And, if we substitute the phrase ‘vanguard party’ for “king’,
it recalls Lenin by urging rulers to achieve merciless realism through
 THEBUDDHA ANDTHE SOCIAL CONTRACT 419

mutual self-criticism. I would not push these parallels too far: Marx
would dismiss Buddhist rajadhamma as bourgeois ideology, while the
Buddha would dismiss dialectical materialism as a wholly misguided
ontology. Perhaps the parallels are merely what you get when two world
views which are each historicist and concerned primarily with other
issues deal with law en passant. But at least it makes a change from
the social contract! Buddhist political theory is a small field and for
the last century the social contract has cast a shadow right across it.
Who knows what exotic new plants will sprout in the sunlight once
we have chopped it down?

NOTES

’ The prime concern of the Leviathan is to punish and end quarrels. But Hobbes
does allow that the Leviathan can act as legislator. There are no common standards
of good and evil ‘save from the arbitrator whom men, disagreeing, shall by consent
set up and make his sentence the rule thereof.’ (1651: 635)
’ As Lessnoff does in the passage quoted by Collins at p. 387. Lessnoff’s distinction
between bilateral and multilateral relies on technicalities of the law of contract. It is
therefore inappropriate for analysing ‘weak social contracts’ based merely on popular
consent. For an exhaustive account of thirteen ways in which western social contract
theories disagree with each other, see Klenner (1988). Another recent work which
summarises legal approaches to the social contract is Kelly (1992: 96-9, 128-3 1,
168-72, 208-219).
3 Mediaeval Europe also indulged in nirukri etymologies: ‘Kings get their name from
ruling (reges a regendo vocati) . . . and he who does not correct (qui non corrigit)
. . . does not rule. Thus the name of king is held through doing right, and is forfeited
ty doing wrong.’ St. Isidore ‘Etymologiae’ 9.3, quoted in Kelly (1992: 96)
There are, I admit, references in the canon to ‘annointed kings’ [as for example
at A iii 1511. This is noise rather than message. It is part of everyday life which
the Buddha mentions rather than a practice which he advocates. A relevant thought
experiment: can we imagine the Buddha devising a coronation ceremony?

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