Local Government in Ancient India c3.4

c3.4

Here I may as well raise a caveat against certain sources of bias which are apt to vitiate our historical judgements. Sometimes there is an unfounded belief in immobile, exaggerated racial types, in an exclusive European or Asiatic mentality, which, if true, would make Indian history disparate with European. Others again have sought to interpret and appraise Indian culture in terms of the fundamental concepts of Western social progress and civilization. This unfortunately amounts to putting Indian life in all its original and spontaneous forms and vigorous growths into the Procrustean bed of the shibboleths and copy-book maxims of Western social science. I have tried my best to be on my guard against these sources of bias. If I have occasionally seemed to be guilty of reading into ancient records the modern notions of the West, perhaps the very conditions of writing on indigenous topics in a foreign language are largely responsible for it. I have been driven to the necessity of using, for instance, such familiar terms of Western political experience as guilds (craft-guilds and merchant-guilds), partnerships, municipalities, and the like, but they do not always imply precisely corresponding institutions in Indian politics with an exact identity of structure and functions. I have used them in a broad sense as convenient symbols to express allied realities or notions. It will also, I trust, be found that I have not made any observations or drawn any conclusions which are not supported by the clearest texts or other adequate evidence.