India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c13.s1.1

c13.s1.1

*JANAPADA ANALOGOUS TO CITY-STATE*—The *Charana*, *Gotra* and *Janapada* are three typical Pāṇinian institutions of educational, social and political life respectively. It is not without significance that the term *Janapada* is conspicuous by absence in the Vedic Saṁhitās. It occurs only in the latest phase of the Brāhmaṇa period, and found its full development in the period of the *Ashṭādhyāyī*. A comparative study of human societies affords innumerable analogies, and we find unmistakable parallels between the *Janapada* State in India and the City-State in Greece. Both flourished at about the same period. In Greece a large number of City-States represented so many isolated communities, which were self-contained and had their own systems of government, but all of them had very similar social and religious customs and institutions. A few like Athens and Sparta were more important than others.