Local Government in Ancient India c7.35

c7.35

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*.