The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c16.21

c16.21

What Vikramâditya did, as the champion of Indo-Aryan institutions, was to restore peace and order throughout his dominions, and revive the ancient traditions of popular self-government which was the original basis of Aryan civilisation where the true spirit of Aryan statecraft was ever able to assert itself. The Aryan clan to which the Guptas belonged was one of those which from time immemorial had been accustomed to self-government upon the principle of the Aryan village community. The head of each clan, the Râja, was the head of a confederation of villages—miniature republics as they have been aptly called. The Mahâ-Râja was the head of a confederation of clans, and Vikramâditya the suzerain of a larger confederation, over which he ruled, not as an autocrat, but as the upholder of the Dharma of the Aryan race. The grouping of clans which acknowledged his supremacy and paid the customary *vali* was not disturbed. The Râjas and Mahâ-Râjas recognised as loyal to Aryan institutions were not deposed: only those who were hated as Mhlechas, or enemies of the Dharma, were, as the records of the time say, "rooted out."