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368 



Kajendralala Mitra— An Imperial Assemblage 



[No. 3, 



An Imperial Assemblage at Delhi three thousand years ago. — 

 By Rajekdkalala Mitba, LL. D. 



The Imperial Assemblage to be beld at Delhi on the 1st of next month 

 cannot fail to recall to the mind of oriental scholars the description, given 

 in the Mahabharata, of a similar gathering held there npwards of three 

 thousand years ago. Then, as now, the object was the assumption of para- 

 mount power by a mighty sovereign. Then, as now, princes and potentates 

 came from all parts of India to do homage to one who was greatly their 

 superior in power, wealth, and earnest devotion to rule honestly and pater- 

 nally. Then, as now, the feeling of allegiance was all but universal. But 

 noteworthy as these points of similitude are, there are others which place 

 the two assemblages in marked contrast. The one was held by men who 

 had barely emerged from a state of primitive simplicity in the infancy of 

 human society ; the other is to be inaugurated under all the refinements and 

 paraphernalia of the highest civilization. The one borrowed all its sanctity 

 from religion ; the other depends for its glory on political and material 

 greatness. The one was purely national ; the other brings into the field a 

 dominant foreign power. There are other points, equally remarkable, both 

 of similitude and of divergence, which afford singular illustrations of the 

 state of political ideas at immensely remote periods ; and a short account 

 of the ancient ceremonial may not, therefore, be uninteresting at the present 

 time. 



The ceremony, in ancient times, was called khe]JRdjasuya, or that which 

 can be effected only by a king — from Raj an ' a king' and shu ' to be effect- 

 ed'. This derivation, however, is not universally accepted. Some interpret 

 the term to mean the ceremony at which the Soma juice is produced, from 

 raja ' moon' for the moon-plant, and su ' to bring forth' ; but as there are a 

 hundred different rites at which the brewing of the Soma beer is an essential 

 requirement, while it is distinctly laid down, that none but a king who can 

 command the allegiance of a large number of tributary princes, and who is, 

 or wishes to be,* a universal monarch, exercising supremacy over a large 

 number of princes, should perform it, the first derivation appears to be 

 the right one, — at least it conveys an idea of the true character of the 

 ceremony, which the other does not. Yajnika-deva, in his commentary on 

 the S'rauta Sutra of Katyayana, explains the word raj a in the first aphorism 

 on the subject, to mean a Kshatriya,f without specifying that he should be 

 a king, and this may at first sight suggest the idea that any Kshatriya, 



* KT«TT ^KT^^fTflT ^T«T^^T W<T I Taittiriya Brahmana. 



t Km ^^j: ik ii ^ ^ ^m 5 ^: ^fwnf«Tf*rfirfj* i 



