Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c12.13

c12.13

§ 21. Pāṇini, dealing with the formation of the word *saṁgha*, in III. 3. 86 (संघोद्धौ गणप्रशंंसयो:।) says that the word *saṃgha* (as against the regular *saṃghāta*,¹ derived from *han*, III 3. 76) is in the meaning of *gaṇa*. When Pāṇini has occasion to mention individual *Saṃghas*, he names communities which are known from monumental and other evidence to have been republican.² In his time *Saṃgha* denoted *Gaṇa*, and the **religious** Saṃgha does not appear to have come into prominence. In fact, as we shall see, the latter was a copy of the **political** Saṃgha. Known republican bodies are called by Kauṭilya *Saṃghas*.³ There is thus not much room to doubt that Saṃgha originally meant a republic. The most ancient work of the Buddhist, the Pāli Piṭaka, itself confirms this. The Majjhima Nikāya (I. 4. 5. 35) uses the terms *saṃgha* and *gaṇa* side by side, taking them to mean, without the fear of least confusion, the republics of the time of the Buddha: ‘*imesaṃ pi hi bho Gotama saṃghānaṃ, ‘gaṇānaṃ seyyathīdaṃ Vajjinaṃ Mallānaṃ*’ “and “this is so, O Gotama, in respect of the Saṃghas, “Gaṇas, for instance, the Vajjis, Mallas.” Thus *saṃgha* and also *gaṇa*, which are used here as in Pāṇini, synonymously, signified, *par excellence*, the republics. The republics were *the saṃghas and the gaṇas* at the time. Their secondary use, adoption by religious communities of the time, was just taking shape.⁴