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THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUCCESS royal but also the priestly principle. He was the mediator between heaven and carth. And should his dominion suffer from defeat, famine, or corruption and himself be overthrown, his fall was to be interpreted as a sign that heaven (l’ien) had withdrawn its mandate, dissatisfied because of some personal deficiency in the higher virtues. The usurper who then managed to establish the new dynasty obviously drew to his own house the heavenly favor and bore the Heavenly Mandate (l'ien ming) on his victorious brow.
The heads of the later Hindu kings lacked this light of glory. Not the supreme Lord of the World but only the goddess of fortune, Fortuna, śrī Lakşmī, a fickle and comparatively weak divinity, was regarded as their guarantor of success and continued rule. And she forsook her favorite the moment fate (daivam) left him in the lurch. Temporarily she was incarnate in the king's supreme queen, so long as any reason for the connection lasted, but if he dallied away his prosperity in self-indulgence, or fell victim to some mightier rival, she withdrew-reluctantly and in tears-to bestow her favors on her next crowned fondling. Śrī Lakşmi had nothing to do with virtue, but only with politics and the turn of the wheel of time. The philosophy of life of the Hindu kings and chancellors was fatalistic, skeptical, and unregenerately realistic.
Valor against Time
THERE is an age-long argument that comes down through the Hindu literature of all eras, from the feudal period, as represented in the Mahābhārata, to the works of comparatively mod
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