¹ When dhārmika people lose a dhārmika ruler, they become distressed in this manner. That is one of the points to be learnt from this chapter. It is a false theory that monarchy is necessarily evil or inferior to democracy. If the monarch accepts Vedic authority in thought, word and deed with the standard understanding of Vedic teachings as presented by a bona fide disciplic succession, such a monarchy is far better than governance by the people, of the people and for the people, for the following reason. In monarchy, if the monarch is corrupt, the system collapses and that is readily understandable; but if the monarch is not corrupt, the system is realistically sustainable on ethical grounds as long as he is in charge. On the other hand, in democracy, since the vast majority of the population are anyway corrupt, governance of the people can never ever be non-corrupt; any hope that it can ever become non-corrupt even for a while is simply utopian. However, a basic prerequisite to dhārmika monarchy is the verifiable presence of royal advisors in the form of genuine brāhmaṇas which people can certainly choose to become if they uninterruptedly and nonduplicitously obey the teachings of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. These teachings have been summarized by Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī in his Upadeśāmṛta and Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu which have been presented by Śrīla Prabhupāda as The Nectar of Instruction and The Nectar of Devotion respectively. We urge serious readers of Śrī Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa to carefully peruse these two important books to benefit themselves and others.