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Local Government in Ancient India c7: Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations

Local Government in Ancient India c7

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Chapter I. Preliminary Considerations

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THE sources of this study are twofold, viz. Literary and Epigraphic. In dealing with the literary evidence the following three possible orders suggest themselves, viz. (1) the order of chronology, (2) the order of organic development as traced in the historic course of origin and evolution, and (3) a logical order of ideal sequences and connexions.

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Inasmuch as the chronological order of early Indian culture-history has not yet been definitely fixed and ascertained, the first named has to be supplemented or modified by references to the other two orders. In the light of these considerations a method has been followed in the present inquiry which gathers together the available evidence on a particular topic and arranges it in the chronological order, seeking at the same time to trace the line of development and differentiation in successive stages.

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There is another preliminary consideration which has to be observed in dealing with the evidence.

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In treating the passages from literary works, and especially our law-books, as also those from the inscriptions, it is to be understood that the institutions to which they refer will be found to have exercised three classes of functions, viz. (*a*) industrial and commercial, (*b*) administrative, and (*c*) social or customary, including civic, educational, and religious. Each of these functions was exercised in accordance with definite rules and usages, some of them unwritten, others embodied in written agreements or charters as between the state and the assembly, or between the assembly and its members. The laws of associations, to which we shall refer later on, should therefore be understood to have a general scope and applicability, as comprehending the totality of these interests. A variety of terms has also to be used in correspondence with the variety of the institutions and of the functions they performed. Those terms, though necessarily general and almost abstract in their character, do not imply any looseness of social structure or function in relation to these institutions, but, on the contrary, indicate an organic inter-adaptation of social life and interests as well as a variety and flexibility characteristic of periods of exuberant growth.

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Of the three broad classes of functions distinguished above with reference to the local institutions, we shall first deal with the industrial and commercial.

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To the institutions representing these functions we shall apply the convenient term *guilds*, including trade-guilds, merchant-guilds, and craft-guilds, as the case may be, in view of the affinity in functions of these Indian institutions to their western counterparts.¹

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¹ It is not, however, clear from our texts whether the same assembly exercised these various functions, or whether there were differently constituted and composed bodies for these different interests and works. There are, it will be seen, traces in the evidence furnished by the copper-plate inscriptions and grants, especially in southern India in the ninth and tenth centuries, of an elaborate and distinct machinery, popular in origin, though recognized and controlled by the state, having gradually appeared in the midst of the village communities themselves for the discharge of these various responsibilities of communal life.

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Before going into the evidence we are confronted by another difficulty, which it is best to discuss and deal with at the outset. We find that Sanskrit literature uses a large number of terms with reference to these indigenous local bodies possessing various characters and functions. The communal life of ancient India, indeed, sought to express itself through a variety of institutions, civic and municipal, industrial and commercial, political and religious, and the evidence very often treats together all these diverse types of corporate life, thus making it difficult for the investigator to separate one from the other. There is, again, another difficulty to the inquirer, arising from a marked divergence of opinion among the authoritative commentators as to the proper scope and meaning of the various terms employed in the original texts to indicate these popular local bodies. The following, for example, are the terms we generally come across in our literature, viz. *kula*, *gaṇa*, *jāti*, *pūga*, *vrāta*, *śreṇī*, *saṅgha*, *naigama*, *samūha*, *sambhūya-samutthāna*, *pariṣat*, *caraṇa*. Most of these terms occur in the legal literature, which is characterized by the definiteness and precision of its phraseology and language, and yet the commentators very often differ in their interpretation of the same.

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Thus, to take a few examples, the term *śreṇī* in Manu, VIII. 41,¹ is explained by Medhātithi² as ‘guilds of merchants, artisans, bankers, Brāhmans learned in the four Vedas’, &c.; by Govindarāja, as ‘guilds of merchants and *husbandmen*’; and by Nandana, as ‘guilds of merchants and actors’.³ The term *śreṇī* in Nārada, I. 7⁴ has been defined by one commentator as an assemblage of eminent *merchants* and by others as a company of *artisans*. The *Kauṭilīya* uses the word *śreṇī* in II. iv⁵ in the sense of guilds of workmen, but in VII. xvi¹ the word has a political reference, meaning a military clan; and in XI. i.² the term is applied to corporations that subsist by agriculture, trade, and military service, such as the Kāmbojas, Surāṣṭras, and Kṣatriyas. The *Smṛti-Candrikā* applies the term to the eighteen low castes and crafts like those of the washerman, leather-manufacturer, actor, basket and mat maker, fisherman, weaver, &c. (For the complete list see p. 65, Mysore Edition.) The *Mahābhārata* uses the word in the sense of a guild of merchants

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¹ जातिजानपदान्धर्मान् श्रेणीधर्मांश्च धर्मवित् । समीक्ष्य कुलधर्मांश्च स्वधर्मं प्रतिपालयेत् ॥

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² एककार्यापन्ना वणिक्कारुकुसीदचातुर्विद्यादयः ।

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³ वणिक्कुशीलवादि ।

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⁴ कुलानि श्रेणयश्चैव गणाश्चाधिकृतो नृपः ।

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⁵ वास्तुच्छिद्रानुलासेषु श्रेणीप्रवहणीनिकाया आवसेयुः ।

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¹ नित्यामित्रया श्रेणीबलं ।

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² काम्बोजसुराष्ट्रक्षत्रियश्रेण्यादयो वार्त्ताशस्त्रोपजीविनः ।

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(iii. 248, 16³). Similarly, as regards the term *kula*, one commentator on Nārada, I. 7, takes it to mean an assemblage consisting of a few persons, and others as only a family meeting. The word in Yājñavalkya, II. 31⁴ is explained by the *Mitākṣarā*⁵ to mean an assemblage of kinsmen, relations, and friends. The same term is used in the *Kauṭilīya* (I. xvii) in the sense of a council of regency or oligarchy, the rule of which is preferable to that of an incompetent king.⁶ More various are the uses and interpretations of the term *gaṇa*, which in Manu, III. 164¹, is explained as meaning peoples or guilds. Govindarāja and Kullūka, commenting on the term in IV. 209,² mention as examples a fraternity of Brāhmaṇas inhabiting a monastery. The word in Nārada, I. 7, is explained by one commentator to mean a fellowship such as the Brāhmaṇa caste, and by others as an assembly of co-inhabitants, while the same word in X. 2³ is explained, on the authority of Kātyāyana, to signify an assemblage of families. The *Mahābhārata* uses the term with reference to a political, self-governing corporation, which is also the sense of the word in such expressions as *Yaudheya-gaṇasya*, occurring on the coins of the military clan of the Yaudheyas, and *Mālava-gaṇa-sthiti*, occurring in the Mandasor inscription of Kumāragupta. The *Vivādaratnākara* (see Naigamādisaṃjñā) takes the term in the sense of an association of Brāhmans alone, the *Smṛti-Candrikā* (p. 40) in the sense of a confederation of Kulas, while the *Vyavahāramayūkha* takes it as a composite confederation of all other associations.

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³ ब्राह्मणाः श्रेणिमुख्याश्च तथोदासीनवृत्तयः । किं मां वक्ष्यन्ति किं चापि प्रतिवक्ष्यामि तानहम् ॥

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⁴ नृपेणाधिकृताः पूगाः श्रेणयोऽथ कुलानि च ।

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⁵ कुलानि ज्ञातिसम्बन्धिबन्धूनां समूहः ।

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⁶ न चैकपुत्रमविनीतं राज्ये स्थापयेत् । कुलस्य वा भवेद्राज्यं कुलसङ्घो हि दुर्जयः अराजव्यसनाबाधः शश्वदावसति क्षितिम ॥

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¹ गणानं चैव याजकः।

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² गणान्नं गणिकान्नं च विदुषा च जुगुप्सितम्।

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³ पाषण्डिनैग मश्रेणीपूगव्रातगणादिषु। According to the *Vyavahāramayūkha* the term *gaṇa* denotes the composite assembly in which are federated together all the other associations mentioned in this passage; see below, p. 129, n.

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Nārada introduces in X. 2 a new term *pūga*, which the *Vīramitrodaya* has interpreted in three senses, viz. (*a*) companies of traders and others, (*b*) associations of persons differing in caste whose mode of subsistence is not fixed, and (*c*) riders on elephants, horses, &c. Yājñavalkya (II. 31) has also used the term, and the *Mitākṣarā*¹ explains it as the assembly of the co-inhabitants of a village or town of different castes and occupations, as distinguished from the *śreṇī*, which is the more limited assembly of persons belonging to a common craft or occupation, whether they be of the same or different castes. The *Vivādaratnākara* explains it as a ‘guild of merchants and others’.

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¹ पूगाः समूहा भिन्नजातीनां भिन्नवृत्तीनामेकस्थाननिवासिनां यथा ग्रामनगरादयः ।

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Some of these terms have been in use from times much earlier than those of our legal literature. We find them used by Pāṇini, and their explanations by the *Kāśikā* are interesting. Pāṇini uses the terms *pūga*, *gaṇa*, and *saṅgha* in V. 2, 52, *pūga* in V. 3, 112, *vrāta* in V. 3, 113, and *saṅgha* in III. 3, 42. 86 and V. 3, 114. Pāṇini, according to the *Kāśikā*, uses *saṅgha* in the generic sense. It may be of various kinds according to the various objects of the association. It is defined as a union of individuals pursuing common aims and interests (*ekadharma*, *Kāśikā*), and not a mere chance collection or a confused medley of individuals (III. 3, 42. 86.). Thus the *pūga* is a special kind of *saṅgha*, an association of men of various castes who, having no fixed occupation or means of livelihood, unite in the pursuit of wealth and pleasure as their main aim¹; the *vrāta* again is an association of men of different castes having no definite means of subsistence, and living by bodily labour or violence,² like the *Kāpotapākya* or wild community making its living by pigeon-hunting, &c. Pāṇini also uses the word *śreṇi* in II. 1, 59, which has been explained by both *Kaiyaṭa* and the *Tattvabodhini* as an assembly of persons following a common craft or trading in a common commodity.³ Lastly, Pāṇini mentions another kind of *saṅghas* that live by the profession of arms of which he gives some examples, e.g. the *Yaudheyas*, &c. Of such corporations, the *Kāśikā* names more than sixty examples⁴ as being included under the rules of Pāṇini (V. 3, 114–117).

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¹ नानाजातीया अनियतवृत्तयोऽर्थकामप्रधानाः संघाः पूगाः।

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² नानाजातीया अनियतवृत्तय उत्सेधजीविनः संघा व्राताः।

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³ एकेन शिल्पेन पण्येन वा ये जीवन्ति तेषां समूहः श्रेणिः।

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⁴ The *Kāśikā* mentions as examples of *pūgas* (1) *Lauhadhvajya*, i. e. those that have as their emblem something that is made of copper, the red metal; the *Tattvabodhini* reads *lauhitadhvajya*, to signify a body of persons having a red flag as their emblem; (2) *Śaibya*, perhaps the 'Siboi', the wild tribe with a republican constitution subdued by Alexander; (3) *Cātakya*; (4) *Devadattaka*, the tribe led by Devadatta; as examples of *vrāta*, besides (1) *Kāpotapākya*, we have (2) *Vraihimatya*, a non-Brahmanical people (*St. Petersburg Dict.*); (3) *Kauñjāyanya*, perhaps the kingless tribe of *Ārjunāyanas* (see V. A. Smith’s *Early History of India*, third ed., p. 286); and (4) *Brādhnāyanya*.

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The *Kauṭilīya* confines the sense of the term *saṅgha* to that of a political corporation (XI. i).¹

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¹ **संघवृत्तम्।** In the Jaina literature, e. g. *Kalpasūtra*, the terms *gaṇa*, *kula*, and *śākhā* are used in distinct senses. *Gaṇa* designates the school derived from one teacher; *kula*, the succession of teachers in one line; *śākhā*, the lines which branch off from one teacher. The Jaina inscriptions of Mathurā assigned to the age of Kaniṣka (*Ep. Ind.*, vols. I and II) constantly use the terms *gaṇa*, *kula*, *śākhā*, and sometimes *sambhoza* (Lüders's List, no. 27), e. g. the *Kottiya* (*Kauṭṭika*) *gaṇa*, the *Thāniya* (*sthānīya*) *kula*, the *Śrī-gṛha sambhoga*, the *Āryyaverī* (*ārya-vajrī*) *śākhā*. In the *Vinaya*, vol. IV, p. 226, there is mention of *saṅgha*, *gaṇa*, *pūga*, and *seṇī*. The terms occur in other places too, e. g. *Cullavagga* (V. 5, 2; VIII. 4) where it is the turn of a *pūga* to feed the *saṅgha*.

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On a closer and critical consideration of these various terms, their usages and interpretations, it will be found that the variety is not without underlying unity, and that the complexity of annotations is reducible to a comprehensible simplicity. Thus, the majority of the authorities, e.g. Manu, Nārada, Kauṭilya, the *Mahābhārata*, and the like, agree in having employed the term *śreṇī* to mean *guild*, whether it be the guild of artisans, agriculturists, or merchants, i. e. the craft-guild, trade- or merchant-guild ; while a similar sense has been fixed for the term *pūga* by authorities like the *Kāśikā*, the *Mitākṣarā*, and the *Vīramitrodaya*. The other two terms, *saṅgha* and *gaṇa*, apparently were used by the earlier authorities like Pāṇini, Kauṭilya, and the *Mahābhārata* in a political signification to mean autonomous, *kingless* clans or corporations as distinguished from *kingships*.

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The existence of these various terms is in itself strong evidence demonstrating the reality of the institutions designated. We shall now go into the details of that evidence scattered throughout our literature, and shall try to piece them together so as to trace the continuity of the life and history of these ancient local institutions and unfold the process of their evolution through the ages. As has been already stated, we shall first of all deal with the development of self-government in the sphere of industrial and commercial interests, and shall accordingly trace the history and evolution of what may be called the ancient Hindu guilds.

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