Local Government in Ancient India c7.9

c7.9

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.