The Mauryan Polity c6.s3.t7.1

c6.s3.t7.1

From this we are to understand that the state in Ancient India, at least so far as the Mauryan India was concerned, was not unitary in type but federal in character, speaking in the language of modern political science. It was roughly a composite of federal states. It is indeed difficult to determine the nature of the ancient Indian state in general, and the Mauryan state in particular. It is again an intricate task to set forth the substantial relations which existed between the imperial Government and each of the provinces or states now united in the Empire as its member. Every student of modern Political Science knows that federation which has its roots in the remote past ‘varies in form from place to place, and from time to time’.¹ One view of a federal state is that when a central authority exercises limited jurisdiction over authorities beneath it, then that authority is a federal authority. Viewed in this light the Mauryan state was a federal state. For it cannot be claimed to have exercised unlimited jurisdiction over states beneath it, a mark of a unitary state. But its was not a rigid federal constitution. It was a loose form of confederation made up of congeries of states.²