State and Government in Ancient India c12.s8.22

c12.s8.22

Governments in ancient India could eventually reach the people and discharge their functions mainly through these bodies, and the representatives of the people had a decisive voice in them. Kings may impose any number of taxes; eventually those only could be realised which the village councils could agree to collect. The local bodies were also discharging judicial functions and that removed a powerful engine of oppression from the control of the king. They had also a prescriptive right to a fair percentage of the land tax and other revenues collected in their jurisdiction, which they could utilise according to the wishes of the locality for the local works of public utility. The local executive officers were usually hereditary servants and not members of the central bureaucracy ; they, therefore, generally sided with the local bodies in their tussle with the central government. The village communities and town councils to a great extent resembled small republics, where the voice of the people prevailed. The activities of a tyrannical king, therefore, were not usually very effective much beyond his capital. The extensive decentralisation advocated and brought about in ancient India was thus the most effective and practical check upon the king's powers. The checks of the modern type were absent because the idea of the representative government was unknown both in the East and the West down to the 16th century.