Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c16.74

c16.74

§ 76A. The city of 'the nation called Brachmanoi' (Arrian, VI. 16; Diodorus, XVII, CII), also mentioned as the 'country of the Brachmans' (Dio. XVII. CIII) was next reduced by Alexander. This seems to have been identical with what Patañjali calls Brāhmaṇako nāma Janapadaḥ (II. p. 298) '*the country* (state) *called Brāhmaṇaka.*' *Janapada* here is in the same sense as in Pāṇini and on the coins, i. e. a politically self-contained country or a state. The Greek idea of the identity of tribe and state is so strong that on account of the existence of a state the citizens are turned into a tribe as in the cases of all other independent cities and states in the Punjab and Sind, while Indian authorities, contemporary with the states in question, treat their names as derived from 'countries', e. g. Pāṇini (IV I. 168—177). In other words, the Indian view is territorial, not tribal.