Local Government in Ancient India c6.s1.9

c6.s1.9

In respect of local self-government as it developed in India, however, we shall find that the Indian institutions are practically *sui generis*, representing a type which may be sharply distinguished from the type represented by the corresponding institutions in modern polity. The fundamental difference is that, while, in the latter case, the state, as a fully developed and completely constituted body, consciously creates autonomous centres within itself by devolution and delimitation of its own functions, in the former the communal institutions, guilds, and local bodies have an independent origin and growth out of fluid and inchoate conditions of tribal life and organization. When the state comes to supervene or be superimposed upon these, it has to treat with them more or less on terms of equality and recognize their pre-existing rights by conventions and agreements which operate as charters regulating their mutual relations. Thus the varied interests of the communal life, such as administrative, judicial, civic, commercial, or industrial, are assured by the voluntary co-operation of independent and integral units of a common body politic.