A History of Hindu Political Theories from the Earliest Times to the End of the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.130

c10.130

Dissension, then, according to this view, is the bane of the gaṇas and its avoidance their primary desideratum. Next to this in the author’s estimation perhaps ranks the necessity of concentration of the main functions of administration in the hands of a council of chiefs.∗ The heads of the gaṇas, we are told in the above context, should be principally respected, for the course of worldly affairs depends largely upon them. Descending to details the teacher says that the safeguarding of counsel as well as espionage should be left to the chiefs, for, as he states with true insight into the nature of public assemblies, it is not meet that the gaṇa as a whole should hear the counsel. The heads of the gaṇas should carry out in secret the measures contributing to their welfare, for otherwise the interests of the separate, divided and scattered, gaṇas would suffer decay and there would arise dangers among them.