The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c28.162

v1.c28.162

Of the polity which we have outlined, the only polity approved by Indian science, the keystone was the sovereign. Even in the Vedic age the prevailing system was monarchical¹. Nevertheless the Vedas afford evidence of tribes in which the chief authority was exercised by a family, or even, as in the case of the German nations described in the work of Tacitus, by a whole body of nobles, who are actually designated kings². Of such ruling oligarchies the age of Buddha furnishes, as is well known, a number of examples: such were the Mallas of Kusinārā and the Licchavis of Vesālī. To these oligarchical communities the growth of the great kingdoms proved destructive: at the time of Alexander’s invasion they had largely disappeared from eastern Hindustān, and in the Punjab also Porus was working for their subjugation³. The Arthaçāstra (Chaps. 160–1) has even a policy of compassing their overthrow by internal dissension. Nevertheless, a number of them survived through and after the Maurya empire⁴, and one of them, that of the Mālavas, handed down to later India its first persistent era, the so-called Vikrama era, which is still the common era of northern India.