Local Government in Ancient India c4: Preface to the Second Edition

Local Government in Ancient India c4

Language: English

Preface to the Second Edition

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In the second edition I have made some additions and alterations which, I trust, will throw new light on the subject.

Some of my critics take exception to the cumulation of Northern and Southern evidence on the subject of local bodies in Ancient India. The ‘physical and cultural unity of India’ is the *bête noire* of *soi-disant* orientalists of this class. A barren identity or a dead uniformity of structure and function is all that they understand by unity of type. The unity of a group, e.g. the halogen group, of a biological zone, or of a polymeric or a homologous series, is a concept which baffles these unilinear intelligences, these lengths without breadth, these ‘surfaces’ without depth or comprehension. Fresh investigation has only confirmed the conclusion that local government in Northern India and that in Southern India belong to the same series in the order of sociological development. Their tribal origins and rudiments may have been diverse and heterogeneous, but there is no mistaking the essentially Indian stamp impressed upon those institutions. This is the same phenomenon of ‘convergence’ and environmental adaptation in *social and cultural evolution*, which has been so powerful a factor in determining race origins and race types in *physical anthropology*. Negrito or Kolarian, Dravidian or Mongoloid, all ethnic contributions, in this melting-pot of the Ages, have been incorporated into a common Indian mould, of which the artificer was the Indo-Aryan consciousness, itself the inheritor of divers indigenous traditions.

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Take, again, the so-called chronological ‘gap’ or ‘discrepancy’ between the evidence from the North and that from the South. Steeped in the pedantries of the old philology and the aridities of a jejune and barren chronology, these would-be historians and critics miss a central fact of prime importance to the scientific historian, the movements and migrations of culture. In the present case, there was such an historic migration, but what travelled from the North to the South was only the cultural ideal or form, which subsumed and arranged under a certain scheme the rich and varied material of tribal institutions and ethnic customaries in the outlying regions of the East and the South. And it is to be noted that the Southern institutions, when they first emerge into view, evince marks of a certain maturity and a certain established order, which point to a long process of silent growth in the dim twilight of the earlier centuries, unconnected though they might be with those political crises and cataclysms of state, which leave historical records behind. And the so-called ‘gap’ or ‘gulf’ is nearly bridged by the discovery of missing links which make up almost a continuous chain of evidence running through the successive epochs of Indian history. For the Northern evidence, dating back to the Vedas, does not end with the Epics, and the earlier *Smṛtis*. We have a continuing tradition in the long roll of legal texts and commentaries, ranging from the fifth to the fifteenth century—*Saṃhitās*, *Nibandhas*, *Pariśiṣṭas*, *Saṃgrahas*, *Bhāṣyas*—of which the name is legion, and which we have freely drawn upon as sources of an unimpeachable authenticity and authoritative tradition. Neither can it be contended that the Northern and the Southern evidence show any divergence, in source or in character, Brahmanical or otherwise. The congruity of these sources is complete, even to the extent of a common nomenclature, and a common framework that were imposed on originally diverse local institutions. If the earlier Northern evidence is drawn mainly from Brahmanical (and Buddhist) texts, the Southern evidence equally includes Brahmanical *Smṛtis* and commentaries, which again refer back to ancient authorities. In the same way, the evidence of inscriptions is not confined to the south or to the mediaeval period. Part of the most important Northern evidence, for instance, comes from coins and inscriptions of the guilds of the Gupta period.

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In fact, a *rigid and stereotyped* chronological method is to a large extent inadequate for scientific interpretations of cultural history. In this field, the historic or genetic method is the supreme guide in our investigation, and a chronological framework is but ‘apparatus’ or ‘scaffolding’ to be used in the service of the scientific method. And it is often necessary in these investigations to pursue an upward as well as a downward course, in other words, to trace upwards existing institutions to their origin and source, so far as an unbroken line can be discerned, and at the same time to descend from the *fons et origo* to the later and broader ramifications, until, it may be, the stream is lost in the arid deserts of mediaeval chronology. By following this double line of ascent and descent, the historic method would gain in power, range and fruitfulness: it becomes an instrument of discovery, a new organon for the investigation of that historic continuity, which is the objective of all studies in evolution, whether biological or sociological.

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A doubt has been raised by an esteemed critic as to the ‘*sui generis*’ character, which the writer has claimed incidentally for the local bodies of ancient and mediaeval India, as distinguished from the mediaeval village communities in the West. The question is really a very difficult and complicated one, relating, as it does, to the various lines of development, along which primitive tribal institutions were differentiated into communal groups of diverse types in diverse cultural regions and epochs. The writer’s views on this fundamental question of social and political evolution have been briefly indicated in the third section of the Introduction, from which the distinguishing characteristics of the Indian institutions can be easily gathered. Briefly stated, the Indian theory favours neither anarchy nor the unqualified pluralism of discrete and isolated groups without reference to any nexus or solidarity as provided by the State, by Dharma, or otherwise. The mediaeval folk-moots, guilds, and village communities among several Western peoples of Teutonic stock smacked of their primitive communal origin in pre-State conditions and had to come to terms with the State when the latter supervened by conquest or consolidation.

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Nor, again, are the local bodies of ancient India the products of decentralization operating in the sphere of a central unitary State: such has been the origin of local governments in modern polity. The Indian polity, so far as it is possible to generalize in respect of regional zones of this character, was, therefore, in its final development, neither pluralistic nor monistic in its trend and type, but a balanced synthesis of three distinct and co-existing elements, the State with its jurisdiction as represented by the Daṇḍa, the individual on the Road to Freedom (*Mukti*), and the various intermediary groups, functional, local or voluntary (e.g. in various types of Eastern monachism), connecting these two poles by means of their own Dharma, their special Codes, and Customaries.

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Unless we bear this triune structure in mind, we shall fail to understand the distinctive functions of these separate elements, and thus miss the significance in Indian polity of the State's jurisdiction in arbitrating between the individual and the intermediary group, or between group and group, as well as in upholding, by Daṇḍa, by veto or otherwise, their various Dharmas, Codes, and Customaries—a jurisdiction which was radically distinct from that of an absolute central State, in existing modern polity—happily passing away—the sole organ of the collective will and personality, the supreme source of fiats and laws, and the ultimate seat of power and responsibility.

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I owe special acknowledgements to Dr. William Crooke, C.I.E., and Professor A. B. Keith for their kind correction of the proofs. Dr. Brajendranath Seal, M.A., Ph.D., King George V Professor of the Calcutta University, has laid me under great obligations by his valuable suggestions. My thanks are also due to Mr. George Frankland for his preparation of the Index.

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<p align="right">RADHAKUMUD MOOKERJI.</p>

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<p align="left">MYSORE, June, 1920.</p>