Local Government in Ancient India c16.2

c16.2

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.