Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c9.s7.240

c9.s7.240

The Vṛijian confederation must have been organised after the decline and fall of the royal houses of Videha. Political evolution in India thus resembles closely the developments in the ancient cities of Greece where also the monarchies of the Heroic Age were succeeded by aristocratic republics. The probable causes of the transformation in Greece are thus given by Bury : “In some cases gross misrule may have led to the violent deposition of a king; in other cases if the succession to the sceptre devolved upon an infant or a paltry man, the nobles may have taken it upon themselves to abolish the monarchy. In some cases, the rights of the king might be strictly limited in consequence of his seeking to usurp undue authority; and the imposition of limitations might go on until the office of the king, although maintained in name, became in fact a mere magistracy in a state wherein the real power had passed elsewhere. Of the survival of monarchy in a limited form we have an example at Sparta; of its survival as a mere magistracy, in the Archon Basileus at Athens.”