Manusmriti and Arthashastra on Punishment Theory: A Jurisprudential Comparison with Bentham and Kant

Abstract

Purpose: The philosophy of punishment — addressing why societies inflict suffering on those who violate their norms, how much suffering is warranted, and what institutional processes are required to ensure just outcomes — is among the oldest and most contested domains of legal and moral philosophy. The Western academic tradition has typically treated Immanuel Kant's retributive theory and Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian framework as the foundational pillars of modern punishment philosophy, constructing subsequent jurisprudential debate largely as a dialogue between these two positions. This framing, however, systematically marginalizes a body of sophisticated punishment theory that predates both Kant and Bentham by more than two millennia: the ancient Indian frameworks of the Manusmriti and Kautilya's Arthashastra, which developed comprehensive, internally consistent, and practically implemented philosophies of punishment that engaged the same fundamental jurisprudential questions with remarkable analytical depth.

Methodology: In this paper, the exploratory qualitative research method is used. The relevant information is collected using keyword-based search in Google search engine, Google Scholar search engine, and AI-driven GPTs. This information is analysed and interpreted as per the objectives of the paper.

Analysis/Results: This research paper undertakes a systematic and multi-dimensional comparative jurisprudential analysis of four punishment theories across two civilizational traditions: the Manusmriti's dharma-based retributive framework (c. 200 BCE–200 CE), the Arthashastra's pragmatic dandaneeti system (c. 300 BCE), Kant's deontological retributivism (1785–1797), and Bentham's utilitarian calculus (1780–1789). The paper examines each theory across seven jurisprudential dimensions: foundational philosophical premise, purpose and justification of punishment, proportionality doctrine, treatment of protected classes and vulnerable persons, evidentiary and procedural standards, institutional structures, and legacy in contemporary Indian penal law.

Originality/Values: The paper argues three principal claims. First, both the Manusmriti and the Arthashastra developed sophisticated punishment theories that anticipated, in different respects, both the retributive and the utilitarian strands of Western punishment philosophy — demonstrating that the fundamental jurisprudential questions about punishment are universal, even as the answers offered differ across cultural and philosophical contexts. Second, the Arthashastra's pragmatic, evidence-based, institutionally elaborated framework is in several important respects more advanced than either Kant's purely deontological or Bentham's purely consequentialist position, combining proportionality, procedural rigour, institutional differentiation, and consequentialist state-interest reasoning in a way that anticipates modern mixed theories of punishment. Third, contemporary Indian penal law — from the Indian Penal Code's proportionality provisions through the Supreme Court's rarest-of-rare doctrine to the ongoing reform debates about rehabilitation and restorative justice — reflects a genuine jurisprudential pluralism that draws simultaneously on all four traditions examined in this paper, and cannot be adequately understood through any single theoretical lens.

Type of Paper: Exploratory Research.