State and Government in Ancient India c18.2

c18.2

Since earliest times, the village has been the pivot of administration in India. Its importance was naturally very great in an age when communications were slow and industrialisation unknown. Town played a relatively unimportant part in ancient Indian life; the Vedic hymns frequently pray for the prosperity of villages¹, but rarely for that of towns and cities. While describing the prosperity of a kingdom, Jātakas proudly give the large number of prosperous villages included in it, but are altogether oblivious to the existence of towns and cities that may have flourished in it. In the Vedic age, as shown already, states were small and this circumstance further enhanced the importance of the village. In later times, even when kingdoms became large, there was no change in the situation, because the village was the natural pivot of administration in a rural society. In modern times, governors often convene a conference of collectors to discuss important questions of administrative policy; in ancient times kings like Bimbisāra used to convene a meeting of village headmen for similar purpose.² There is no doubt that villages were the real centres of social life and important units in the country's economy. They sustained the edifice of national culture, prosperity and administration.