Local Government in Ancient India c16.14

c16.14

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.