The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c18.97

c18.97

² 'Sovereignty may be the property of a clan', *kulasya vā bhaved rājyam* (Bk. i, ch. 17, end). For names of tribal communities see Bk. xi, ch. 1 (Shamasastry, ibid., p. 455). The Mālavas, Kshudrakas, and other nations in the time of Alexander the Great, and the Lichchhavis and Yaudhēyas at a much later date, possessed tribal constitutions of a republican, or at any rate, oligarchical character. The Mālavas and Yaudhēyas were governed by *gaṇas*, according to Thomas, which represented a kind of senate or oligarchy (*J.R.A.S.*, 1915, p. 535). On this subject K. P. Jayaswal has a valuable article, 'Republics in the Mahābhārata', in *J.B. & O. Res. Soc.*, vol. i, pp. 173–8. He declares that the *gaṇa* refers to the whole body politic and not to the governing body or senate, and that the strength of the tribal constitution lay in united confederacy and obedience to leaders. The governing body consisted of *gaṇa-mukhyas* and a *pradhāna* or President. The subject is further discussed by Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar in the *Carmichael lectures for 1918*, 650–325 B. C., published by Calcutta University, 1919; and also by R. C. Majumdar in *Corporate Life in Ancient India* (Calcutta, Surendra Nath Sen, 1918); and by R. D. Mukharji in *Local Government in Ancient India* (Oxford Univ. Press, 1919). These tribal constitutions, which were a Mongolian institution, gradually disappeared together with many other non-Aryan institutions, as the Mongolian people and ideas were overborne by strangers who observed the Indo-Aryan or Brahmanical cult and customs.