Local Government in Ancient India c16: Chapter X. Conclusion
Local Government in Ancient India c16
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Chapter X. Conclusion
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WE have now completed our account of the local bodies of ancient India, their organization, structure, and functions. It is apparent that the South Indian evidence preponderates over the North Indian. The defect of the former is that it is comparatively late in date. Nevertheless, one can trace in it the continuation of the same features and tendencies, the same principles of evolution and organization as are reflected, though dimly, in the documents of the north, both literary and epigraphic. The signal merit of the southern evidence consists in its definiteness, copiousness, and abundance of details, rendering quite explicit what is very often merely implicit in the northern, and demonstrating the practical realization in actual application of the various ideal principles and maxims of local administration embodied in our Smṛtis and other forms of literary testimony to which we have referred in the course of this inquiry. The comparative chronological modernity of the southern evidence is indeed more than compensated by its quantity and the variety of its details which it is impossible to exhaust and investigate completely. The material is still growing, rendering the task of the investigator more arduous and his work less complete. For example, the Tanjore inscriptions alone, associated with the Cola King Rājarāja I (A. D. 985–1013), testify to the existence of no less than 150 village-assemblies and of 40 other villages where the affairs of the village were administered, as in the city-states of ancient Hellas, by all the inhabitants collectively. As Mr. Venkayya points out (*Arch. Surv. of Ind. Report* for 1904–5, p. 135) the system must have been in operation in thousands of other villages whose names and exact number await discovery by future researches. Neither the period nor the circumstances in which such village-assemblies arose in Southern India can be definitely ascertained.
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In Mr. Venkayya's opinion the mention by Megasthenes of six boards of five members each, to which the evidence of the Uttaramallūr inscriptions closely corresponds, favours the supposition that the system was carried into Southern India by the Aryan immigrants, and that slight alterations probably were made to suit the conditions of the south. The same hypothesis will serve to explain the lateness of date of the South Indian evidence bearing on the local bodies which seem to have owed their origin to the transplantation of the earlier North Indian institutions.
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But along with the transplantation of the institutions there has been also a transplantation of names with them. The terms Sabhā and Mahāsabhā of the Southern inscriptions have the authority of the Veda for their currency. (Has the Samiti of the Veda, the term for the general assembly of the people, been converted into Mahāsabhā for the sake of greater definition?) It may be noted that the term Sabhā is retained in the expression Nigama-Sabhā occurring in a Northern inscription. We have again in the South such terms as Samvatsara-grāmakārya committee, Mūlapariṣad, Nirvāha-Sabhā, Maṭha, Sthānika, Nagara (with a vernacular suffix), and the word Gaṇa in such formations as Gaṇapperumakkal and Ālumgaṇattar already referred to, as also Rahasyādhikārīn, Adhikārin, Senāpati, Madhyastha (names of officers), Ājñapti, pramāṇa (deed), vyavasthā, parihāra (immunities), grāmadrohin and kaṇṭaka, madhyama (village common), gopracāra-bhūmi (pasture), and the like. These Sanskrit terms thus adapted into the popular political phraseology of the South supply one more proof of the common origin of developments that seem different in their necessary local variations.
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Some of the results of this inquiry, and the conclusions to which it points, may now be indicated.
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The first characteristic feature of these Indian local bodies is that they are not uniformly composed and constituted. They present a variety of types. The principle of the association is not always the same. As in the sphere of the central government, Indian political evolution has realized itself through diverse types of state and not the one uniform and invariable autocratic or theocratic type, as is too commonly supposed, similarly, even in the smaller sphere of local government, there has been a considerable diversity of political growths.
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The various local institutions on closer analysis will be found to illustrate two types of political formation, namely, (*a*) Territorial, where the principle of association is that of neighbourhood, the bond of physical connexion promoting associated life among the children of a common soil; (*b*) Communal, where the group formation is not determined by the physical, but—broadly speaking—by the moral or spiritual factor. It is not the relationship to a place, but the community of interests and functions that leads to the grouping. It is also to be noted that such associations of interests or functions were of course determined in India by the fixed social divisions of the country, and not by the free choice of the units composing the associations. They are not deliberate groupings dictated by self-interest and subject to changes in their composition—not spontaneous or natural but hereditary groupings. The terms and conditions of the association were immutably fixed in accordance with the principles of the larger social grouping and organization regulating the entire life of the community.
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These two types of political institutions were co-existent in the villages of India. The Sabhā was the assembly of the Brāhmans in which other castes had no place. But, though the principle of its formation is communal, its actual working and functions proceed upon the territorial principle. As has been abundantly demonstrated in the evidence adduced, the Sabhā was the supreme governing body of the village, but the village was not, of course, inhabited by the Brāhmans alone, but by people of other castes as well. We have already seen from one inscription referred to above how in the composition of the so-called villages other castes found their natural and necessary place. Every village, therefore, was bound to be a heterogeneous composition, but governed by a homogeneous body. Thus the Brāhman Sabhā is to be understood as a wider body than that limited and close corporation called the caste. It is communal in origin and structure, but is governed by the contrary principle as regards its functions.
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But the Sabhā was not the only type of the governing body of a village. There were villages governed by assemblies called Ūrār, of which, as we have already seen, the structure and functions were determined by the territorial principle. They were not constituted by a single caste, but by all castes. They were thus strictly territorial, political assemblies or democracies. No doubt the extant evidence regarding these general assemblies of the people is extremely meagre, but this may be explained by the fact that the circumstances which usually furnish such evidence were themselves rare in their case. Most of the benefactions, from diverse sources, royal or private, Brahmanical or other castes, as recorded in the published inscriptions, are generally connected with temples and Brāhmans.
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It is further to be borne in mind that each of these principles of grouping seems to have evolved its own way of political development for the people in the growth of larger assemblies and federations in an ascending scale of democratic life and extending circles of territorial jurisdiction. Thus the Mahāsabhā was a development on some lines out of the Sabhā. The individual village is not a world unto itself, but is viewed as part of a larger whole. There is thus a widening of the sphere of interests and public service. Similarly, the general assembly of the village, representative of the entire people, the Ūrār, is carried to its next stages of development in the Nāṭṭār or District Assembly and the yet larger assembly of Nāḍu or Division. And yet larger than the assembly of a single Nāḍu, we have references to the great assembly of twelve Nāḍus (no. 600 of 1908, a Cola epigraph), nay of seventy-nine Nāḍus covering an area as vast as a province. In another inscription, as we have already seen, we have the number of men attending such a meeting given as 1,500. A list of seventy-nine Nāḍus making up a part of the Cola empire of Karikāla is given in an old Tamil document called *Thondai-Mandala-pad-dayam* (cited in *Madras Review* of 1896, pp. 94–95). The *Malabar Manual* (vol. I, p. 89) quotes the following words of the Honourable Company's representative at Calicut regarding these old institutions: ‘The Nad or County was a congeries of *taras* or village republics, and the Kuttam, or assembly of the Nad or County, was a representative body of immense power which, when necessity existed, set at naught the authority of the Raja and punished his ministers when they did unwarrantable acts’ (quoted in *Madras Review*, ib., p. 325). One inscription, as we have already seen (p. 240), refers also to this assembly of the Koṭṭam.
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We have again evidence of the existence of yet larger and more composite formations than these simpler assemblies. In one inscription we find the joint session of the assemblies of the Nāḍu and Nagara for the important purpose of converting a village into a mercantile town. In another, there is a joint conference between the Nāḍu assembly, and those of Valaṅgai 98 and Iḍaṅgai 98 sects, to settle certain royal dues. In these parliamentary assemblies we also find the representation of special interests.
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Besides these various types of strictly political associations or territorial structures, we have a similar story of development as regards the non-local communal corporations. The special interests of cities seem to have been administered by their own special bodies called the Nagarattār, the assembly of the Nagara or city. The arts and crafts had their own guilds as their governing bodies. We may refer also to the large guild of oilmen comprising those of Kāñci and its suburbs and of twenty-four Nagaras. Similarly, there were large leagues of merchants, almost Hanseatic in their dimensions, scope, and activities, of which we have already cited some typical examples. It may be easily understood that these industrial combinations, based as they are upon the non-local principle, upon community of occupations and interests, can not have their particular kind of jurisdiction limited by any local boundaries. They have a different principle of growth which transcends physical limitations. Akin as regards the principles of formation and working to these commercial combinations are also the many educational corporations and religious brotherhoods of the country like the Maṭhas, which show a considerable capacity for organization by which different centres of culture are affiliated to a common seat of authority from which they are all regulated and controlled. The Golaki Maṭha, according to an inscription, exercised its jurisdiction over as many as three lakhs of villages.
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Lastly, we have also seen how the various non-local, communal assemblies, representing different social functions and interests, were capable, when necessary, of merging themselves in a composite and federal assembly, and how Brāhmans and blacksmiths, goldsmiths and merchants, often met on a platform of equality to administer their common civic interests.
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These different types of local bodies are also illustrated in the evidence of Northern India, which is remarkably confirmed by that of the South, as regards the course pursued by the development of local government throughout India. The traditions and practices of local government, which were, of course, much older in the North than in the South, seem to have been fixed as early as the time of Pāṇini. It will appear from the evidence already cited that Pāṇini uses the term Saṅgha in a generic sense to indicate all deliberate local associations other than the central government. Such associations are based upon a community of Dharma or ends (see *Kāśikā* cited above) and are of various types according to the various ends or principles of union. Thus a variety of Saṅgha is the Śreṇī which may be both a craft-guild and a merchant-guild. The Vrāta is based on non-peaceful pursuits. The Pūga is based on citizenship, the territorial principle. It was thus the federation of all sectional or communal assemblies. A yet higher development seems to have been embodied in the Gaṇa or political government of the popular type. The later legal literature carefully distinguishes the functions of these bodies. Each of them is invested with executive and judicial functions and other powers of government within the limits of its prescribed jurisdiction. The closest corporation is the Kula based on kinship. The basis is widened in the Śreṇī, in which the community is not of blood but of interest, while the Pūga embodies the final development of the series, being based absolutely on local community, the limits of which may embrace larger areas than those of Grāma or Nagara as explained by the *Mitākṣarā*. Thus the Sabhā of the south corresponds to Kula (the term being still used for the institution existing even now in some parts of the south), the various guilds to the Śreṇī and the larger assemblies of Nāṭṭār and Nāḍu correspond in the principle of their formation to the Pūga.
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A noteworthy example of a composite corporation representing different interests and functions is given in a northern inscription (the Mandasor inscription of Kumāragupta cited above). The inscription narrates that a guild of skilled silk weavers (*prathita-śilpāḥ*) immigrated from the Lāṭa Viṣaya (central and southern Gujarāt) into the city of Daśapura, ‘being attracted by the virtues of the kings of the country’. There the members of the guild pursued different occupations according to their tastes. Some specialized in music, some in story-telling (*kathāvidaḥ*), some in religious discourses (*dharma-prasaṅga*), some in their old craft (of silk weaving), some in astrology (*jyotiṣa*), others distinguished themselves in war (*samarapragalbhāḥ*) destroying their enemies, others, again, conquering attachment to the world (*vijita-viṣayasaṅga*), devoted themselves to piety (*dharma-śīla*) and shone like gods. Thus the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the practical, the literary and the military, find their place and scope under a common organization. But this extraordinary diversity of pursuits within the same guild did not affect its corporate life or weaken its internal cohesion. Contradictions and disagreements of tastes and occupations were blended into a harmonious synthesis under the inspiration of a larger civic consciousness. The skilled musician, the valiant soldier, the clever weaver, the entertaining story-teller, the moralizing preacher, the fortunetelling astrologer and the other-worldly ascetic—all meet in the embrace of a larger life. The consequence of this concord and co-operation was that the guild as a whole grew in power and prosperity, so that out of the abundance of its communal funds was constructed ‘a noble and an unequalled temple of the sun’—a monument at once of its material and moral pre-eminence (*udāra*). Thus the history of this particular guild is a lesson in administration that has to deal with conflicting communities and interests. It is also surprising how a mere craft guild could nourish so much of intellectual life and culture among its members and open out to them within the ambit of its jurisdiction the opportunities for unfettered self-development.
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The luxuriant growth of these local democracies based on every possible principle of formation must modify the opinion of such critics as declare that ‘In ancient India there was nothing of the nature of a political institution between the village and the central government’ (Sir W. W. Hunter quoted in J. Matthai’s *Village Government in British India*, p. 32), or that communal associations based upon caste do not admit of the juxtaposition of both political and social functions, or of their federation for purposes common to different communities and castes. On the other hand, it may be quite reasonably assumed that it is the very growth of these numerous, multi-form, intermediate assemblies between the state and the individual which can most effectively help on the evolution of Indian political life, along the lines of natural growth and least resistance, from the local to the central government, the rural to the national democracy. This pluralism of the group, as an intermediate body between the state and the individual units, has been the most characteristic feature of Indian polity through the ages, and indicates the lines on which Indian political development should proceed. The path of this political development should lie in the direction of ‘incorporating more and more the life of the individual and the general will of the state-personality into the varied forms of social grouping’.¹ It is for statesmanship to consider how it should utilize these traditional and historic advances towards a democratic polity as materials for the political experiments and constructions of the future.¹
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¹ *The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government*, is the highly significant title of a recently published book (Longmans, March 1919) by M. P. Follet who states:—‘One of the characteristics of present political *theory* is its reaction against the state, and a salient political *fact* to-day is the increasing amount and power of group-life—trade-unions, professional societies, citizens’ leagues, neighbourhood associations, &c. . . . Group organization is to be the solution of popular government . . . The study of the group process . . . shows us that politics cannot be founded on representative or electoral methods but *must rest on vital modes of association*.’
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¹ A comprehensive survey of the extant, indigenous, local, and social democracies of India will appear in a forthcoming work by my brother, Dr. Radhakamal Mookerji, M.A., Ph.D., of the Calcutta University.
Linked texts (2)
- Ἰνδική — Λούκιος Φλάουιος Ἀρριανός, Ancient Greek
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit