India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c12.s5.9

c12.s5.9

The family basis of *Gaṇa* polity preserved the hereditary character of its rulership vesting in the same families. The number and names of these families comprising the ruling class were carefully preserved as in the case of the Lichchhavis whose number is stated to be 7,707 in Pāli literature. In the capital of the Cheta state mention is made of 60,000 *khattiyas* all of whom were styled *rājāno* (*Jāt.*, VI.511), and must have represented so many Kshatriya members constituting that State. The craze for constituting new republics had reached its climax in the *Vāhīka* country and north-west India where clans consisting of as many as one hundred families only organized themselves as *Gaṇas*, as in the case of the hundred sons of Sāvitrī establishing themselves as a Kshatriya clan under the name of *Sāvitrī-putras* with the title *rājā* applied to each one of them (Vanaparva, 297.58; Karṇaparva, V.49; and Pāṇini in the *Dāmanyādi* group, V.3.116).