State and Government in Ancient India c13.7

c13.7

Apart from the evidence of coin legends and technical constitutional terms, we have also the valuable testimony of some contemporary Greek writers to show that there were many forms of non-monarchical states in ancient India. The account of Greek writers is held at discount in some quarters ;² it is impossible not to suspect, they say, that the account of the State machinery given by them was not deliberately assimilated to the forms of government prevailing in Greece. It is very difficult to accept this line of argument. The political sense was nowhere more developed and state institutions better studied than in ancient Greece. Greek historians found both monarchical and non-monarchical forms of the state prevailing in India. They themselves liked democracy better than monarchy, and there is no reason to believe that they would have gone out of their way in making a false statement about the prevalence of democracy among Indians, who were their bitter political opponents for a long time. A study of their writings shows that they have taken particular pains to distinguish the different forms of government. Amphi was a king and so was Porus ; when the latter became a faithful subordinate ally of Alexander the Great, we are told that the Greek conqueror added a large province to his kingdom, 'subduing inhabitants whose form of government was republican'.³ The government of the city of Nyasa was in the hands of an aristocracy.⁴ The Sabaracae was a powerful Indian tribe, 'where the form of government was democratic and not regal'.⁵ To the east of the Beas was a powerful kingdom 'in which the multitude was governed by the aristocracy, who exercised their authority with justice and moderation.¹ There were a number of non-monarchical states in the Indus valley, but when the Greeks came across a monarchy in that region, their historians do not fail to mention it. They are careful to point out that the kingdom of Mausikanos was governed by a king and that of Patala, by two kings belonging to two different families, but ruling simultaneously with the help of the popular council. When such minute facts about the variations in the forms of the state and administration have been carefully noticed by the Greek writers, we cannot brush aside their account on the fanciful plea that their imagination, which incited them to see Hellenistic things in non-Hellenic countries, was mainly responsible for their references to Indian republics. M'Crindle's view that the independent or autonomous states mentioned by the Greek writers refer to village communities is equally untenable.² Greek authors in fact have rarely referred to the village life or village government. Nor can we accept the opinion of Fick that the autonomous states of the Greek writers were individual cities or small states that maintained their independence in the neighbourhood of great monarchies like that of Magadha.³ The fact is that there was no such big monarchy in the Punjab in the days of Alexander the Great; as a matter of fact non-monarchical states were more extensive and powerful than the monarchical ones in that province at the time.