The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c11.96

c11.96

In these free states we have also, it appears to me, to seek the πόλεις αυτονομοι, of which Megasthenes¹ speaks. That by these republics are to be understood, seems to me hardly probable. What the Greek messenger saw and what he tried to express by the word αυτονομοι, was, in my opinion, only the fact that in the immediate neighbourhood of great monarchies, such as, the kingdom of Magadha, whose capital town Pâtaliputra itself was, individual cities or small states maintained their independence and were autonomous. That, moreover, the constitution of these small states was wholly different from that in the monarchies, I cannot accept; the difference consisted, in my opinion, only in the greater or less part which the remaining members of the royal families took in the government by the side of the king and by which they more or less limited his absolute power. A râjan stood even in Veśâlî and other free states at the head of the government, though he was only *primus inter pares*,¹ who had precedence over his kinsmen in the Council. The latter, however, whether in their position as *uparâjan* or *senâpati*, or as members of the Council, exercised no small influence upon the government.