The Philosopher King

The other evening when some friends came to Madurai and we met for the evening, I finally made it to the Thirumalai Temple for the evening sound and light show. Living here in Madurai for nearly two months, I was nearly the victim of typical complacency while living in a place, thinking, “Oh, I’ll do that one day, I have plenty of time...” Well, Time is beginning to become shorter and shorter with regards to my remaining stay here, so it was good to get this one ticked off of my list.

And, it was quite a nice surprise. I had heard from others that the Thirumalai Nayak Palace was “ok, but nothing special,” and given palaces such as Versailles or Windsor, no, indeed, it is nothing special. However, what turned out to be the pleasant surprise was learning more about Thirumalai, who, perhaps as many other so-called “enlightened monarch” that I have heard about in history, he fits the bill quite adequately and snugly.

The “Philosopher King” was a concept that grew out of Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates has an protracted dissertation with Glaucon and Adeimantos, inter alia, about the nature of Justice, which is really just a smokescreen for the true import of the dialogue, which is the establishment of a proper monarch with a properly educated and enlightened monarch. For Plato, (via the much-maligned words of Socrates) this monarch was a rare bird, someone who was groomed from childhood, culled from the group to be the best of the best, top of the class in every aspect ranging from ratiocination to an appreciation and/or discernment for the arts. Ultimately, something that is often overlooked when analyzing Plato’s opus, Socrates says that this Ideal State with an Ideal leader will never actually materialize on earth, but shall always be a pale imitation of a divine template that we can only aspire to, though never reach, never to cross x-y axis with our best asymptotic efforts. Only God can be such an enlightened Be-ing.

Though, that did not stop Plato from testing it out with Dionysos II, who became a miserable tyrant and failed prodigy, nor did it stop many European dynasties from trying to claim the ascendancy to the rule of divine right, most notably the King of Albion of old, namely Jolly Old England. At present, these formerly proud geneaological experiments on inbreeding are mere figureheads at best, and more realistically, except for tabloid entertainment, a strain on the public coffers. But, people like their royalty. Americans are gaga for regalia as well, so no exception there.

Yet, there have been some pretty good approximations at a “true” Philosopher King, and from what I have learned about Thirumalai, I would be willing to place him amongst the hallowed few. Hearing about his surrogate hagiography in the sound and light show at the Palace, I found myself more than once thinking, “yeah, I could dig a king like that!”

Thirumalai, at least according to the piped-in propaganda, was highly educated and greatly supported the arts of poetry, music, and singing, magnanimous in his charity, and above all, was quite willing to admit he was wrong and to duly heavily endow the wronged party with bountiful remunerations of land, property, and power. One such example was that when a thief successfully breached the fortified walls of the Palace by hitching a ride on a large monitor lizard scaling the wall, Thirumalai, who had said his Palace was impregnable and would reward any master thief proving otherwise, reportedly gave the thief seven villages to lord over as his reward for being Madurai’s best thief, thwarting the adage that crime does not pay.  In short, he was the guy you wanted at the controls when the Mysore army was threatening to advance or to ensure that your city won the praise of all of India for its erudition and support of the arts. Madurai has been called over the years “the Athens of the East” (though the vice versa is perhaps more apt, given Madurai’s longer presence as a thriving urban cultural center).

I have never lived as a subject or vassal to a king, so I don’t know what such loyalty and fealty would be, but when I do read or hear about kings like Thirumalai or Queens like Elizabeth (they were near contemporaries), I do have a feeling that the world lacks something so special these days.

Thinking about Kings and Queens and guillotines and knights of yore, I could not really think of a single, living world leader that I would either pledge my life to, nor would really say, “yeah, this one’s really got the full package of a Philosopher King.” It is easy to romanticize the past that was before us, many a historical buff can become dysfunctionally trapped in a world that never existed, and given that the majority of what I learned about the Nayaks comes from a court-executed, Tamil epic of praise, the Shilipaddikaram, one must take such stories with a grain of salt. However, it does give me pause, and sitting there during the show, I did indeed wonder what it would have been like to be living in the glorious renaissance of 16th-17th-century Madurai...