Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c20.s9.t2.11

v1.c20.s9.t2.11

If we consider the system from the period described by Arrian, Curtius, and Diodorus, we shall see in the government of townships each commune an ‘ imperium in imperio ’ ; a little republic, maintaining its municipal legislation independent of the monarchy, on which it relies for general support, and to which it pays the bhog, or tax in kind, as the price of this protection ; for though the prescribed duties of kings are as well defined by Manu¹ as by any jurisconsult in Europe, nothing can be more lax than the mutual relations of the governed and governing in Hindu monarchies, which are resolved into unbounded liberty of action. To the artificial regulation of society, which leaves all who depend on manual exertion to an immutable degradation, must be ascribed these multitudinous governments, unknown to the rest of mankind, which, in spite of such dislocation, maintain the bonds of mutual sympathies. Strictly speaking, every State presents the picture of so many hundred or thousand minute republics, without any connexion with each other, giving allegiance (an) and rent (bhog) to a prince, who neither legislates for them, nor even forms a police for their internal protection. It is consequent on this want of paramount interference that, in matters of police, of justice, and of law, the communes act for themselves ; and from this want of paternal interference only have arisen those courts of equity, or arbitration, the panchayats.