The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c5.8

c5.8

North-east, in Central India and on the western coast, which afforded shelter to hard-pressed tribes and clans and enabled them to preserve their peculiar institutions. In the North, the vast Indo-Gangetic plains, flat and monotonous, have largely determined the form of political organisation. Here the contrast with Greece is complete. In Greece, as Zimmern puts it, " each little plain, rigidly sealed within its mountain barriers, and with its population concentrated upon its small portion of good soil, seems formed to be a complete world of its own. Make your way up the pasture land, over the pass and down on to the fields and orchards on the other side, and you will find new traditions and customs, new laws and new gods, and most probably a new dialect. You will be in a new nation."' In North India, the absence of any hills, lakes or unfordable rivers militated against the permanence of political boundaries. *Prima facie*, every state would tend, as it were naturally, to encroach upon its neighbours. It was not long before public opinion and political philosophy held up to admiration the ideal of the " big kingdom," " the kingdom extending up to the sea," " the universal dominion." Constant efforts were made to realise the ideal in some practical form or other, in reality or in name. The result was almost incessant warfare or readiness for war which was bound to influence the structure and working of governmental institutions. It would promote the monarchy as against other forms of government. It might mean heavy military expenditure and correspondingly heavy taxation. Whenever an extensive dominion came into being, the difficulty of communications,—the standing difficulty of all pre-modern governments—might prove well-nigh insurmountable. The authority at the centre could not easily make itself felt at the circumference. Rigid centralisation would be impracticable. Regional autonomy would