Maurya and Shunga Art c5.5

c5.5

But a slow and steady widening of the tribal and primitive outlook was being effected in the political sphere. Already in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa we hear of such sacrifices as the ‘Rājasūya’ and the ‘Aindramahābhisheka’, of ‘Sārvabhauma’ kings, of paramount rule and of all-encompassing sovereignty. The same political conception of ‘rāja sārvabhauma’ is repeated in Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra, and that of ‘rāja chakkavatti’ in early Buddhist and Jaina texts.¹⁴ In reality however the normal political condition of Northern India till the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. was not that of an empire of any considerable extent under a ‘sārvabhauma’ monarch but it was that of separate small and independent states and kingdoms under a king or tribal leader. It was only towards the third quarter of the fourth century B. C. that the ideal was partially achieved in the person of Mahāpadmananda who has been referred to in the Purāṇas as ‘sarvarājochchhettā’, ‘sarvakshatrāntaka nṛipaḥ’ and ‘ekarāṭ’, the supreme monarch, and one of his sons, the last of the dynasty, as the powerful monarch of the Prasioi and the Gangaridai, in the accounts of classical historians. Politically, India was thus slowly but steadily growing out of its tribal psychological outlook which was sure eventually to influence the social and cultural outlook of the leading sections of the people.