The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.44

v1.c17.44

While the sense ‘clan’ is comparatively rare, the word *viç* not unfrequently in the plural denotes ‘subjects’: so we hear of the *viças* of Tṛṇaskanda, a king elsewhere unknown, and of the *viças* of the Tṛtsus, the royal family of which Sudās was a member. In the former case the sense ‘clans’ is obviously inappropriate, while in the latter the rendering ‘clans’ which was long adopted has resulted in the confusion of the relations of the Bharatas and the Tṛitsus, the Tṛitsus being regarded as a people opposed to the Bharatas, instead of taking their place as the rulers of the Bharatas. The subjects as a whole made up the *jana*, a term which in Vedic use denotes either the individual man or the collective manhood of the tribe as a political unit. Above that unit no political organisation can be shown to have existed. The confederacy of the five tribes by whom Sudās was attacked was evidently more than a mere passing episode, but clearly it did not involve any system of political subordination, from which a great kingdom could emerge. There was however beyond that a feeling of kinship among all the tribes who called themselves Āryan, stimulated no doubt into distinct expression by their presence in the midst of the dark aboriginal population.