Local Government in Ancient India c13.26

c13.26

It has already been made clear that the evidence derived from South Indian inscriptions is far more copious and elaborate than that from the northern. The evidence of the south brings out the fact that the village assemblies of ancient India had developed a considerable differentiation of functions and also different organs for the exercise of each function. As has been already pointed out, it is not quite clear from the northern testimony of both literature and inscriptions how far the same assembly exercised a multiplicity of functions, administrative, judicial, municipal, and the like, or whether there were developed differently constituted and composed bodies to administer the different interests of communal life. So far as the purely judicial functions were concerned, the evidence of the Smṛtis set forth above probably points to the growth of independent institutions for the purpose, but no such definite opinion can be pronounced in respect of the other functions. The gaps and deficiencies of the northern evidence are, however, supplied and made good by the southern, which is remarkably rich in details such as enable us to form a clear idea of the structure of the local government, its organs and functions, the character of the administrative machinery devised as a whole, as also of its different parts.