State and Government in Ancient India c14.s1.41

c14.s1.41

It will be shown in Chap. X how the towns and cities had their own non-official councils exercising considerable powers. But Jayaswal is wrong when he suggests that capitals as such had their own Paura-Assemblies, which were distinct from those of the Realm-Assemblies (Jānapada bodies). As far as the latter are concerned, there is no evidence whatsoever to show that they existed and functioned in the post-Buddhist period. All the evidence of Jayaswal about their existence is literary in nature and we have shown above how it does not at all prove the existence of a twin torganisation, the Paura-Jānapada Assembly, which could depose the king, nominate his successor, give or withhold sanction for new taxes and demand and obtain industrial, commercial and financial privileges for the country (*Hindu Polity*, II, p. 108). It is contended that this organisation flourished from 600 B. C. to 600 the A.D., but it is very strange indeed that it should be referred to nowhere in the contemporary inscriptions. We can get a fairly detailed picture of the Mauryan administration from the account of Megasthenes and the inscriptions of Aśoka, but neither source refers to any Central Parliament like the Paura-Jānapada Assembly of Jayaswal.¹ Nor is such a body known to the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭilya.² It is strange that it should not have been included among the *sapta-aṅgas* of the state by a *single* work on polity. Gupta inscriptions and seals refer to scores of officers, but the Paura-Jānapada body is conspicuous by its absence. Jānapada seals have been discovered in large numbers at Nālandā, but they are the seals of the Panchāyats of the respective villages whose names they bear, and not of any Central Popular Assembly.³ We have discovered hundreds of copper plate grants belonging to the different dynasties ruling in northern and southern India from *c.* 500 to 1300 A. D. While assuring a peaceful possession of the villages granted in them, kings refer to all possible officers and authorities from the crown-prince to the village headman, who were likely to disturb the peaceful possession of the donees and charge them to refrain from doing so. But the Paura-Jānapada Assembly of Jayaswal does not figure *even in one single record*. If such an assembly