The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c5.23

c5.23

resisting a king. Ultimately, they depended on the king, the landed magnates or the community at large for grants, fees, and presents. In economic life, too, the organisation was never so strict in ancient India as in Europe. The guilds, essentially local in character, were never well-knit together. In the political conditions which obtained in ancient India, this habit of loose organisation would tend to produce a sort of federalism or feudalism—feudalism which represents want of system rather than a system. This trait in the Hindu character was intensified by the imaginativeness which was another striking feature in the temperament of the ancient Hindus. To soar above the earth was often to lose touch with realities and to drift away from system. On the other hand, the Hindu mind was remarkable for its love of logic. It delighted in classification, division and endless sub-division. In practical life it sometimes pursued logic with extraordinary tenacity and tended to run an idea to its extreme consequences. Here is one of the causes of the growth of caste. Europe stopped at class; Hindu India rushed into caste.