Assertion: Some Buddhist text reveals that the institution of kingship was based on human choice.
Reason: The Jataka suggest various such stories where people willingly made a person their King for a period of a year.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The Buddhists also developed an alternative understanding of social inequalities, and of the institutions required to regulate social conflict. In a myth found in a text known as the Sutta Pitaka, they suggested that originally human beings did not have fully evolved bodily forms, nor was the world of plants fully developed. All beings lived in an idyllic state of peace, taking from nature only what they needed for each meal.
However, there was a gradual deterioration of this state as human beings became increasingly greedy, vindictive and deceitful. This led them to wonder: “What if we were to select a certain being who should be wrathful when indignation is right, who should censure that which should rightly be censured and should banish him who deserves to be banished? We will give him in return a proportion of the rice ... chosen by the whole people, he will be known as mahasammata, the great elect.” This suggests that the institution of kingship was based on human choice, with taxes as a form of payment for services rendered by the king. At the same time, it reveals recognition of human agency in creating and institutionalising economic
and social relations.