Peter Junger writes, in response to my fuller elaboration of the //Agga~n~na Sutta// passage which , arguably, contains a 'social contract':


But the people were also bound by their collective agreement to 'take' the punishments meted out by the king, where these are in accordance with Dhamma (the Sutta stresses Dhamma in the sense of something like 'social justice' a lot).


< And anyway I don't see any suggestion in the -
Perhaps what one has to say is 'this is, from a Buddhist perspective, the precedent (whether seen as historical, mythic or both) establishing the grounds for the legitimacy of governments; a precedent, moreover, which shows what is in accordance with Dhamma'.

peter.harvey@sunderland.ac.uk