Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c9.s10.166

c9.s10.166

That the people actually put a curb on royal absolutism is proved by the testimony of the *Atharva-Veda*⁵ where it is stated that concord between king and assembly was essential for the former's prosperity. We have evidence that the people sometimes expelled and even executed their princes together with unpopular officials. Thus it is stated in the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*⁶ "Now Dush-ṭarītu Pauṁsāyana had been expelled from the kingdom which had come to him through ten generations, and the Sṛiñjayas also expelled Revottaras Pāṭava Chākra Sthapati."¹ The *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*² refers to personages who were expelled from their kingdoms (rāshtras) and who were anxious to recover them with the help of the Kshatriya consecrated with the *Punar-abhisheka*. Such persons were the Indian counterparts of the French "emigrants" who sought to reclaim revolutionary France with the help of the troops of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns.³ We learn from the *Vessantara Jātaka*⁴ that the king of the Śivis (Śibis) was compelled to banish prince Vessantara in obedience to "the people's sentence" (*Sivīnaṁ vachanatthena samhā raṭṭhā nirajjati*).