Public Administration in Ancient India c8.14

c8.14

Even as late as the date of Alexander’s invasion many of the nations of the Punjab lived under democratic institutions. The Ambashthas (Sambastai), for instance, “were a people inferior to none for numbers or for bravery. They dwelt in cities in which the democratic form of government prevailed.”⁵ Curtius mentions a tribe called Sabarcae, “a powerful Indian tribe where the form of Government was democratic, and not regal.”⁶ The Kathanians, the Oxydrakai, the Adraistai, and the Malloi, who offered stout resistance to the advance of Alexander, also lived under a democratic form of government. When the Malloi tendered their submission to Alexander, they told him that “ they were attached more than any others to freedom and autonomy, and that their freedom they had preserved intact from the time Dionysos came to India until Alexander’s invasion.”¹