State and Government in Ancient India c9.s1.1

c9.s1.1

Let us now see what were the different types of states existing in ancient India. Ancient constitutional writers hardly discuss this problem. This is probably due to their having flourished in an age when monarchy had become the prevailing type of State. Had a book on *daṇḍanīti* been written by a citizen of an aristocratic or republican state, we might have got some interesting discussion about the nature and types of different states like monarchy, aristocracy and republics and their relative merits and defects. But curiously enough this does not seem to have happened.