The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c5.14

c5.14

of the population have lived in scattered villages. The proportion of the rural to the urban element was, in all probability, even higher in ancient India than at present. The population itself was much smaller and therefore even more dispersed than at present. The Hâthî-gumphâ inscription of Khâravela of Kalinga ( C. 165 B.C. ) puts the population of Kalinga, roughly modern Orissâ, at three millions and a half. A comparison of this figure with the figures available for the Kalinga army and the casualties in a former war and then a comparison with the numbers of the armies given for other regions, and, finally, a comparison with the present population of Orissâ, indicate, very roughly, a hundred millions as the population of the country. The mention of pastures and forests in Hindu literature and the general tenour of the foreign accounts also leave the impression that the country was not so thickly populated in ancient times as at present. No certainty is possible in a matter like this. But the rough indications are that in ancient times the population of India was about one-third of its present strength. It was thus even more diffused among villages than at present. Such a condition was not favourable to the development of that intensity of life which characterized parts of ancient Greece and which issued in democratic organisation. Not only was this vital condition of democracy wanting, but the usual size of a state and the difficulty of communications put direct or representative democracy as a form of central government out of the question. Besides, the essential moral basis of democracy was destroyed by the operation of caste which cut the population into at least four and generally many more racial, occupational or social groups, held in varying degrees of esteem. Caste, however, also struck against aristocracy as a