Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c6.28

c6.28

In this way, democracy descends to the villages and the lowest strata of social structure and operated as the most potent agency of uplifting the masses. Thus ancient Hindu monarchy was a limited monarchy under the very conception of the State. The self-governing groups upon which the State was founded formed a vast subterranean democracy limiting the absolutism of the sovereign at the top.