Note 16.2 — PSYCHE’S TASK
Reading edition
Superstitious veneration for kings in ancient India. Nor have such superstitions been confined to savages and other peoples of alien race in remote parts of the world. They seem to have been shared by the ancestors of all the Aryan peoples from India to Ireland. Thus in the ancient Indian law-book called the Laws of Manu, we read: “Because a king has been formed of particles of those lords of the gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in lustre; and, like the sun, he burns eyes and hearts; nor can anybody on earth even gaze on him. Through his (supernatural) power he is Fire and Wind, he Sun and Moon, he the Lord of justice (Yama), he Kubera, he Varuna, he great Indra. Even an infant king must not be despised (from an idea) that he is a (mere) mortal; for he is a great deity in human form.”16.2 And in the same law-book the effects of a good king’s reign are thus described: “In that (country) where the king avoids taking the property of (mortal) sinners, men are born in (due) time (and are) long-lived. And the crops of the husbandmen spring up, each as it was sown, and the children die not, and no misshaped (offspring) is born.”16.3