The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c6.s7.1

v1.c6.s7.1

W E have seen that from the days of the *Brāhmaṇas* the word *janapada* has been used to denote a particular people or territory in ancient India. The term seems to have had at first an ethnic rather than an administrative significance, being applied to a tract of land occupied by a particular race, tribe, or clan rather than an area marked out for administrative convenience by a government. But the *janapada* was not a mere habitat of an unorganized people. It formed a political community. Such was the *janapada* of the Uttara-Kurus and the *janapada* of the Uttara-Madras in the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*. The states into which the greater part of northern India and a considerable portion of the south down to the Godāvarī were divided in the days of the Buddha were styled *mahājanapadas*. Sometimes the word is used in a purely geographical sense as in the name *Majjhima-janapada*, ‘middle country’. The expression also occurs in the Aśokan inscriptions in connexion with the emperor’s *dhammayātā* (*dharmayātrā*, pious tour), and the duties and responsibilities of the high officials styled *lajūkas* (*rajjukas*). It is not, however, clear whether at this stage the word *janapada* continued to be used in the sense of the realm in general, or in that of a definite administrative unit, like a modern commissioner’s division or district. In the Myakadani inscription of the Sātavāhana king Pulumāyi, however, a *janapada* is expressly mentioned as a district under a military governor. The word, however, very rarely occurs as a designation of an administrative area in later ages. It continues to be used in compositions of a geographical character, e.g. the *Bhuvanakosha* of the *Purāṇas*, or the *deśa-vibhāga* of the *Kāvyamīmāṃsā*, in its original sense of an area associated with a particular race, tribe, or clan often claiming a common ancestry.