State and Government in Ancient India c9.32

c9.32

There are various other theories advocated about the origin of State by modern writers. It is argued that people in the distant past willingly entrusted government powers to an individual, either because he was a priest who could ensure divine help and favours, or because he was a magician who could command rain, or because he was a doctor who could cure patients. It is suggested that individuals who thus happened to gain ascendancy over the minds of their contemporaries, managed to retain it by the use of force, which they could exercise with ease owing to their pre-eminent position, already recognised on a large scale. It is quite possible that in some primitive societies government may have actually arisen owing to the operation of the above factors. But as far as the Indo-European communities are concerned, the institution of the patriarchal joint family seems to have been the germ out of which State was gradually evolved. The evidence of the comparative philology shows that even when the Aryans were in their original home, they were living in joint families consisting of the grandfather, father, uncles, nephews, sons and daughters-in-law.¹ The evidence of Homer shows that these joint families were sometimes so big as to include two or three hundred persons.² The patriarch of the joint family wielded very wide powers over its members ; he could pledge, sell, amputate and even kill any person under his *potestas* for an offence committed by him. The Roman patriarch possessed these powers ; some Vedic legends also show that the father could blind or sell a guilty son by virtue of his patriarchal authority.³ The position of the patriarch in pre-historic times was more or less like that of a king amongst all the Indo-European communities. His jurisdiction increased, though perhaps his powers diminished, as the joint family expanded into a big federation of several natural families, springing from a common ancestor, real or imaginary, and living in the same village. The senior member of the senior-most family in such a village was regarded with great reverence by the whole community and used to be entrusted with most of the governmental functions to be discharged, no doubt, in consultation with other elder persons of the locality. The Ṛigvedic evidence shows that the Aryan society in that early period was divided into families, *janmans*, *viśas* and *janas*.¹ *Janmans* seem to have corresponded to a village consisting of people claiming a common descent, and a number of such villages joined together by a bond of kinship seem to have constituted a *viś*; its chief was known as a *viśpati*. *Viśas* were closely knit together, and on the battle fields battalions were often arranged as per *viś* from which they had been recruited (*R. V.*, X, 84, 4). Several *viśas* made a *jana* or tribe, which had its own *janapati* or the king. This organisation among the Vedic Aryans shows a striking resemblance to the condition prevailing in Rome in early days. There the smallest unit, gens, consisted of a small number of families descended from a common ancestor; a number of these gens constituted a curia and ten curiae made a tribe. Vedic *jana* probably corresponded with the tribe, *viś* with the curia and *janman* with the gen.