The State in Ancient India: A Study in the Structure and Practical Working of Political Institutions in North India in Ancient Times c7.41

c7.41

The monarchy was the normal type of government. There are, indeed, a few passages which at first sight point to the existence of oligarchy. A hymn in the tenth Maṇḍala of the Ṛigveda remarks, “As the Rājans assemble together in the Samiti, the plants gather together in him who is called physician . . . . . .”¹ We read in the Atharvaveda, “They that ruled, a thousand, and were ten hundreds, those Vaitāhavyas, having devoured the cow of a Brāhmaṇa, perished.”² The most probable explanation of these passages is that nobles are meant. In some other passages in the tenth Maṇḍala of the Ṛigveda,³ the Atharvaveda⁴ the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā,⁵ and the Taittirīya Saṃhitā,⁶ the term Rājan seems to be used only in the sense of a noble. It shows that round the king there stood a nobility which claimed the same social status as the royal family.