The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c11.71

c11.71

On the whole, the Greek accounts show the country between the Indus and the Jumnâ divided into a large number of independent and half-independent principalities, frequently at war with their neighbours and all swayed by militarism. The eastern parts of the country seem to have developed the large-state organisation, which, however, was equally militaristic. Of the states in the Puñjâb and Sindh some were monarchical and others tribal oligarchies. Âmbhi of Taxilâ who allied himself with Alexander, Puru or Porus who offered such tenacious resistance and the neighbouring king of Abhisâra, are monarchs of the usual type already considered.¹ It appears that there were many chiefs under a king. At a sort of durbar held by Alexander at Takṣaśilâ, before he met Porus, a number of chiefs came to him with presents from the small territory already subdued. The oligarchies² display variety of organisation but it is impossible not to suspect that their institutions have been brought by the Greek imagination nearer to those of Hellas. For instance, we are told of the Sophytes (Saubhûtis)³ and the Kathians (Kaṭhas) that "they do not acknowledge and rear children according to the will of parents but as the officers entrusted with the medical inspection of infants may direct, for if they have remarked anything deformed or defective in the limbs of