State and Government in Ancient India c13.79

c13.79

These figures no doubt strike us as very large; but we should not forget that in contemporary Greece, the Athenian Assembly consisted of 42,000 citizens, each of whom had a right to attend its meetings. In actual practice, however, not all the members cared to attend. The country people did not like to spend time and money to attend all the meetings. The normal attendance was 2,000 to 3,000, hardly 7 or 8 per cent of the total membership. The Central Assembly of 7,707 members of the Lichchhavis or of 5,000 of the Yaudheyas probably consisted of the heads of the families of the descendants of the founder members of the privileged aristocracy, who were all entitled to the honorific title *rājā*.¹ Some of them stayed at the capital and some were scattered in moffusil or serving there as important government officers. They were all entitled to attend, but at ordinary meetings of the Assembly hardly 10 per cent members may have attended, as in ancient Athens. If a city like Nyasa had an Assembly of 30 councillors, a big state like that of the Yaudheyas might well have had one of 5,000. We should not forget that the membership depended upon belonging to the privileged order, and no one who belonged to it by his birth and extraction could be excluded from it; each member was extremely jealous of his proud position and extraction. There was no question of the possibility of a number of them being represented by one representative, even if the principle of representation had been known at the time, which of course was not the case. In ancient Indian republics, there was then no electoral role giving a list of qualified voters; nor were there any periodical elections. Had any such existed, they would have been referred to in the literature bearing upon the science of polity.