The Early Medieval Irish and Indic Polities and the Concept of Righteous Ruler

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to address the topic of moral cosmos from the viewpoint of early Indic and Irish political thought. What sort of ideas constituted the moral cosmos of the ruler in the early societies of Ireland and India? How close are the ideas of the two societies? Can we establish any connection between them? And, if we can, what kind of connection may it be? Before we go into a detailed analysis of the Irish and Indic sources on righteous kingship, first let us deal with the following issues: methodology, key terms, structures and ideas. In our opinion, the word “polity” may serve as a clue to a proper understanding of the depictions of kingship presented in the early Irish and Indic docu-ments. We take polity, denoting the political culture of a society, to be distinct from politics, which means the political process as it is in reality. Polity is an ideal notion, encompassing a realm of ideas concerning what the proper ruler should look like, how he should behave, what morality he should personify, and in what form – whether in the form of a fable, or a myth, or an instruction – these ideas should be related to him. It is different from “politics”, which is a realistic concept and stands for the ruler’s political activity in a given historical period. Polity can be seen as the essence of secular power in its transcendental dimension, and politics as the essence of secular power in its pragmatic perspective. In early societies polity is closely related to the theological vision of power; the perception of ideal rule that one may witness in the primary sources is to a great extent dominated by the religious archetype current in the society. This archetype serves as the basis for the subsequent development of political thought.

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