Local Government in Ancient India c4.3

c4.3

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.