Local Government in Ancient India c3.2

c3.2

The treatment of the evidence as a connected and comprehensive whole is, however, not free from certain difficulties owing to its special character. This has been discussed in the work towards the conclusion. The evidence of the North and the evidence of the South are separated, for example, not merely by a distance in space, but also by a distance in time. The later date of the southern evidence has been explained by a competent archaeologist on the assumption that the institutions referred to therein were importations from the North, and hence late in their appearance in the South. Both the evidences point, in fact, to parallel lines of development with the necessary local variations. The substantial similarity of the organizations in the North and the South has been the main argument in favour of subjecting them to a common treatment. Intensive studies of local areas have been sometimes supposed to be the only admissible method for investigating the social phenomena of a country like India possessed of such vast territorial extent and variety of social stratification and composition, but, in the majority of cases, such studies do not weaken, but strengthen, the case for generalizations and extensive studies for the whole of India. Sometimes local developments are indeed better understood as parts of a wider and more fundamental one : a study of the whole throws light on the parts. The truth is that India is fundamentally one, physically and culturally. I have very often found that the literary and epigraphic evidence, the law-books and the inscriptions, support and explain one another in spite of their differences in date and locality.