Long before Machiavelli theorised statecraft in fifteenth-century Florence, India's Vedic, Upanishadic, and Sanskrit literary traditions had produced an extensive body of thought on what a ruler owes to those he governs. The concept of rajdharma — the ethical and administrative obligations of kingship — runs through the Arthashastra, the Smritis, the Mahabharata, and a substantial portion of Sanskrit literature. Sanjeev Kumar Sharma's book gathers these threads into a single study.
The range of topics covered mirrors the range of the source texts themselves: taxation policy, criminal justice, foreign relations, military governance, and the moral framework within which all of these were supposed to operate. Rather than presenting these as antiquarian curiosities, Sharma places them in textual context — sourcing claims, identifying the traditions each principle belongs to, and showing how different schools of thought converged or diverged on questions of authority and accountability. The resulting portrait is of a political culture that was neither primitive nor monolithic, but argued, revised, and documented over centuries.
Scholars of political philosophy, students of Indian history, and readers interested in how ancient civilisations thought about governance will find this a well-sourced and serious introduction to a tradition rarely examined on its own terms.
-:पुस्तक के बारे मे:- भारतवर्ष की वैदिक, औपनिषदिक, श्रुति स्मृति अर्थशासर महाकाव्य तथा संस्कृत साहित्य परम्परा में राजधर्म, दण्डनीति राज्य कर-व्यवस्था, प्रशासन, पर-राष्ट्रनीति, आपराधिक न्याय, आदि के विभिन्न आयामों पर गम्भीर चिन्तन के अगणित विवरण एवं तन्तु उपलब्ध है. जो भारतवर्ष के तत्कालीन उन्नत समाज का अद्भुत एवं गौरवपूर्ण दृश्य उपस्थित करते हैं। प्रस्तुत पुस्तक उसी समृद्ध ज्ञान परम्परा की अक्षुण्ण प्रवाहित चारा में से राजधर्म के विभिन्न आयामों की भारतीय दृष्टि के पक्षों को ससन्दर्भ प्रस्तुत करने का विनीत उपक्रम है।
