State and Government in Ancient India c9.s1.16

c9.s1.16

The Vedic literature sometimes refers to *kings* meeting together in an assembly;¹ we are also told that that person alone can become a *king* who is permitted to become one by other kings.² These passages probably refer to the existence of an oligarchy, where power was vested in a council of nobles, each member of which was entitled to call himself a kin and had a right to elect the chief of the state, who also was called a king. We shall see later how this type of the state continued to exist down to the 6th century B. C. in some parts of North-Eastern India.