Local Government in Ancient India c4.5

c4.5

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.