Local Government in Ancient India c13.10

c13.10

Sir Henry Maine stated that ‘in the almost inconceivable case of disobedience to the award of the village council the sole punishment or the sole certain punishment would appear to be universal disapprobation’ (*Village Communities in the East and West*, p. 68). But we have seen from the above evidence that the authority of the local bodies was ultimately not merely maintained by the moral sanction of the public opinion of the community, but was also enforced by the legal sanction of punishment inflicted by the king. This is clear from the evidence of certain South Indian inscriptions, in one of which, of about A. D. 1230, a village assembly decides that any one going against the interests of the village ‘should suffer as the *grāma-drohins* do’ (*Madras Epigraphy*, *Annual Report*, 1910–11, p. 75). This means that injuring the interests of the community is treated as treason against the commonweal and punishable like treason against the king (*rāja-drohin*). The same significance is borne by the term *grāma-kaṇṭaka* (‘a village pest’) in the Uttaramallūr inscription (*Arch. Surv. of India*, 1904–5, p. 144).