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Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c24: Chapter XVI: A Retrospect of the Period of Rise

Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c24

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English

Chapter XVI: A Retrospect of the Period of Rise

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§ 128. Thus we find Hindu republics existing and flourishing as early as the age of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. Ancient Hindus had already developed technical constitutions of various classes with special procedures of *abhisheka* for each class. They must have experimented in those systems for some centuries before the composition of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. Now the date of this Vedic work is to be regarded as *cir.* 1000 B.C. It knows King Janamejaya, son of Parīkshit whom it mentions towards its end. The history of the *Uttara Kurus* also points to an early date of the Brāhmaṇa. The Uttara Kurus in later Vedic literature become a mythological people with a mythological country, while in the Aitareya, as we have already seen, they are a historical community. According to the Aitareya, the greater portion of Aryan India—North, West and South, was covered with republican constitutions. Only in the middle, in the Midland (the Madhyadeśa), monarchy prevailed. The Midland extended from the Kuru-land (the district of Delhi) up to Allahabad, the Doab between the Ganges and the Jumna.¹ Further east in the Prāchī (with its centre in or about Magadha), there was according to this Brāhmaṇa the constitution called Sāmrājya which literally means 'a combination of monarchies,' *i.e.*, a federal imperialism around one dominant member. Except the Doab and Magadha the whole country was republican. Such was nearly the case also in the time of the Buddha, as it appears from Pāli authorities. In his time states in Aryan India, according to the Avadāna-Śataka, were divisible into the classes: ‘those subject to Gaṇa-rule’ or republican, and ‘those subject to royal rule’ or monarchical (*kechid deśā Gaṇādhīnāḥ, kechid Rājādhīnāḥ*).¹ This order, in which the republican countries are placed first, according to the well-known Sanskrit usage, connotes that preponderance in number rested with the republican form.

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¹ The Monarchies named there in the *Aitareya* are the Kuru, Pañchāla, Uśīnara and Vaśa.

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¹ See above § 26, p. 31.

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North and West and South-West were still mainly republican in the time of Alexander. Republics here, therefore, have had a career of about one thousand years at least when Chandra-gupta ascended the imperial throne.

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This was the most flourishing period of the Hindu republics. For national prosperity the Uttara-Kurus become proverbial. For learning the Madras and the Kaṭhas, for bravery the Kshudrakas and the Mālavas, for political wisdom and valiant independence the Vṛishṇis and Andhakas, for power the Vrijis, and for the philosophies of light and equality, for the emancipation of the low the Śākyas and their neighbours, stamp their indelible marks on national life and national literature of Aryan India during that period.

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HINDU REPUBLICS

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(*b*) DECLINE AND DISAPPEARANCE

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