Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c15.16

c15.16

The Mallas do not live so long. They disappear in the time of the Mauryas, or a little later², as a republican community, though individual Malla families rise up now and then, in Tirhut and Nepal, up to the eleven centuries and even later.³ The modern representatives of the Mallas are the Malla caste in the districts of Gorakhpur and Azamgarh⁴, generally given to trade. It is a common phenomenon in the career of Indian republics that when the republicans lost their political power they still retained their commercial intelligence and turned into traders.⁵ (The Pāñchāla survived the Mauryas, for they are mentioned by Patañjali. But the Kurus as a state succumbed. The Kukuras, according to the Mahā-Bhārata, were a member of the Andhaka-Vṛishṇi league. Some of the members of the league apparently observed the 'king'-consul constitution, while others did not.) The Kukuras are mentioned in inscriptions of Western India towards the close of the first century B.C.⁶