Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c16.76

c16.76

To the south of the above there was the state of Patala in the delta of the Indus. Before Alexander arrived, the whole community had migrated to avoid submission This preference for migration to submission was a settled practice amongst smaller Indian republics. The Vṛishṇis, according to the Jātakas and the Mahā-Bhārata, left Mathurā and went to Dvārakā when pressed by Jarāsandha. The movements of the Śibis from the Punjab to Rajputana and of the Mālavas from the Punjab to Malwa were probably results of similar circumstances. In the constitution of Patala their ruler was called *Moeres*.¹ It is evidently identical with the derivative of *Mura* of the Gaṇapāṭha (P. IV. 1. 151), which Vardhamāna in his Gaṇa-Ratna-Mahodadhi (III. 209) takes as a ruler designation. Curtius treats him as a monarch, a confusion which seems to have been occasionally made by these writers. Diodorus, however, gives the constitution of the state in these words: *"A city of great note with a political constitution drawn on the same line as the Spartan; for in this community the command in war vested in two hereditary kings of two different houses while a Council of Elders ruled the whole state with paramount authority."*²