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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10: Chapter IV. The Public Law of the Hindus

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10

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English

Contents

Chapter IV. The Public Law of the Hindus

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Sabhâs* or Administrative Assemblies.

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We shall now take up the institutions of Public Law, i. e. the political institutions proper. To begin with the *sabhâs* or *comitias*. These were of three grades: the rural, the municipal and the national, corresponding to the territorial distribution of governmental or administrative powers.

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The assembly or *comitia* of the rural institutions was known simply as the *sabhâ* or *mahâ-sabhâ* (great assembly) of the *grâma*¹ (village). In mediæval times the village association came to be described in the vernaculars as *panchâyat*² or "government by the five" (i. e. by a body of competent men). But the term is not to be found in Vedic or classical Sanskrit literature. Nor does it appear to be used outside of northern India.

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¹ *Vedic Index*, Vol. I, 244—247.

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² Sarkar's *Folk-Element*, 21, 66—67. *cf*. *Pânch Pyârâ* (Five Dear Ones) of the Sikh polity.

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As a unit of administration the town, known as *pura*, was necessarily the nucleus of a separate institution. In its corporate capacity, i. e., as a *municipium*, the *pura*³ went generally by two, or rather three, different names, — the *pûga*, the *gaṇa*, and the *nigama*. The *pûga*⁴ was a well-known organization in the days when the Buddhist *Vinaya* literature was being compiled. Nay, Pâṇiṇi⁵ was familiar with it. The municipal corporation was thus well established in pre-Maurya times. And, of course, Manu,⁶ Yâjnavalkya,⁷ the later lawyers and their commentators also lived in an age when the *pûga* was the centre and basis of an institutional activity. *Pûga* was often employed as a synonym for *gaṇa*, as we have noticed above.⁸

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³ *Vedic Index*, Vol. I, 538—540.

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⁴ *Chulla-Vagga*, V, 5, 2; VIII, 4, 1.

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⁵ V, 3, 112.

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⁶ III, 151.

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⁷ II, 31.

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⁸ p. 33.

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Nigama as a term for the municipality is used in the Nasik inscriptions¹ of General Uṣavadâta in the first century A. C. It occurs also in the Casket inscriptions² of the second century found at Bhattiprolu in Southern India. In the fourth century Yâjñavalkya³ also uses the term. But it is questionable if he would have employed it to denote the same institution for which he used *pûga* and *gaṇa*. In his hands, at any rate, *nigama*, seems to be specifically applied to a much limited category, viz., the corporation of traders. In any case *sabhâ* as the name of a meeting, council or assembly would stand equally for the *concilium* or *comitia* of the *pûga*, the *gaṇa*, and the *nigama*.

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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, 1905—1906, p. 82; Bhandarkar's *Early Hist.*, Secs. IV, VII.

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² Majumdar, p. 61.

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³ II, 192. Nârada's use of *nigama* in X, 2 seems to be identical.

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The conciliar element in the national, supreme, or central body of the Hindu state was known simply as the *sabhâ* in Vedic⁴ times and in the poetry of the *Râmâyaṇa*⁵ and the *Mahâbhârata*.⁶ In Kautilya's language it was the *mantri-sabhâ* (*sabhâ* of ministers) or the *mantri-pariṣat*. *Pariṣat* is like *sabhâ* a generic term implying an assembly or association.

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⁴ *Vedic Index*, Vol. I, 426, 427.

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⁵ *Ayodhyâ-Kâṇḍa*, Ch. C, 18.

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⁶ *Sabhâ*, ch. V, 30; *Śânti*, ch. LXXXIII, 6—11, 47.

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The *sabhâ* in each of the three stages of political jurisdiction can be taken as a deliberative or legislative body, as an executive council or committee, and even as a judicial assembly or court of justice. Unless the technical sense is clearly indicated, and except where the functions of government have been differentiated into distinct organs, the three territorial assemblies, the *grâma-sabhâ*, the *nigama-sabhâ*, and the *mantri-sabhâ* may be treated indifferently as *comitias* of the legislature, the executive or the judiciary (of the village, the town, and the nation respectively). Normally speaking, Hindu *sabhâs* are administrative or governmental councils of an all-round comprehensive character.

Section 2. The Sva-râj of Rural Communes

1. Pre-Imperial Local Units

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The folk-element in the Hindu constitution is for obvious reasons as old as the *Vedas*. Vedic India was for centuries a land of numerous *svarâjes*⁷ or self-ruled commonwealths. Plentiful therefore as a matter of course were the *sabhâs*,¹ *samitis*, *samsads*, i. e. the *panchâyats*, assemblies, *Versammlungen* or "soviets" of the people. All-comprehensive were the functions of such bodies, deliberative, judicial, military, and what not.

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⁷ *Atharva*, XVII, I, 22, 23; *Vedic Index*, Vol. II, p. 494; Handiqui's "Word *sva-râj* in the *Rig Veda*" in the *Mod. Rev.* for March 1919.

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¹ *Vedic Index*, Vol. II, 426, 427, 430, 431; *Atharva*, II, 27, VII, 12, VI, 87; *Am. Pol. Sc. Rev.* for Nov. 1918, pp. 592—595, 597; Zimmer's *Altindisches Leben*, pp. 172—175; Basu's *Indo-Aryan Polity during the Period of the Rig Veda*.

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Kingship may be taken to have originated early among the Vedic institutions. But in regard to these folkmoots, which were really "direct democracies" of the people, the king's position was virtually that of a "permanent executive".

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And as the whole state was conterminous with the tribe or the village, there could not arise any differentiation of functions between the central and local governments. The "nation" and the "rural commune" were convertible terms. No matter whether tribal (i. e. national) or rural (i. e. territorial), these earliest village councils of the Hindus were the counterparts or replicas of the Homeric *agoras* and the *gemots* of the Tacitean *civitas*.²

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² Stubbs, Vol. I, 26—30; Tacitus' *Germania*, II, 12; Vierkandt's *Staat und Gesellschaft in der Gegenwart*, p. 11; *cf.* the data on territorial associations in Lowie's *Primitive Society*.

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During the lifetime of Śâkya the Buddha and after (c sixth century B. C.), the initiative in local civics and politics was regularly made use of by folk-India. *Santhâgâras* or mote-halls, rest-houses and reservoirs were constructed by the villagers through cooperative efforts. Self-administration extended even to the laying out of parks and the mending of thoroughfares between village and village.

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This cooperation in communal politics was not however the monopoly of men. Women also were proud to be partners in works of public utility.³ Such was the local government in republican India in which the *dramatis personae* of the *Jâtakas* or Buddhist story-literature used to participate previous to the epoch of Maurya Imperialism (B. C. 322).

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³ The stories may be read in the *Kulavaka* (no. 31), *Kharassara* (no. 79), *Ubhato-bhattha* (no. 139), *Gahapati* (no. 199), *Paniya* (no. 459) and other *Jâtakas*; *cf.* Rhys Davids' *Buddhist India*, p. 49; Majumdar, pp. 57, 176.

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Probably the village institutions of this period were not much different from the rural communes of Vedic India. Nay, indeed, these may have been but descended from and were but continuing the traditions of those oldest units of self-rule on Indian soil.

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Under Maurya, Gupta, and other imperial dynasties the government of India was extensive and complex enough to admit of a more or less rigid division between central and local functions. Institutions of rural *sva-râj* were conspicuous in the Western Deccan (Mahârâṣṭra and Gujarat) under the Ândhras of the early Christian era.¹ But on the solid basis of epigraphic evidence the best available picture we have of the constitution of *panchâyats* (lit. government by the five, or council of five, i. e. a body of competent men), the primary units of political life, is that in regard to Southern India² and Ceylon between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries.

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² Aiyangar pp. 158—191; Matthai's *Village Government in British India*, pp. 25-—30; V. Venkayya's "Irrigation in Southern India in Ancient Times" in the *Arch. Sur. Ann. Rep.*, 1903—04; Majumdar, pp. 67—69, 76—79, 82—84; *South Indian Inscriptions*, Vol. III, Pt. I, pp. 1—22; Mookerji's *Local*, pp. 135—142, 210.

2. Local Government in Southern India

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We know of forty villages during the reign of the Chola Emperor Râja-râja I (985—1013) in which the villagers as a body managed their own affairs.³ It was in public meetings that the business was conducted. Earlier, in Parântaka I's time (907—948) we hear of a "full meeting of the great assembly, including young and old". Evidently there was a General Assembly for the entire village and this central *panchâyat* seems to have been sub-divided into several committees or sub-*panchâyats*. There was an annual committee in addition to four separate committees on gardens, tanks, gold and justice. And finally there was a committee styled *pancha-vara*. It was intended most probably for general supervision or possibly for the collection of a special tax.⁴

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³ *Arch. Sur. Ann. Rept.*, 1904—05, pp. 130, 144, 145.

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⁴ *Madras Epigraphy, Ann. Rep.*, 1898—99, p. 23; 1915—1916, pp. 115, 116.

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The local self-government ordinances of Chola India provided that members of the committees must be below 75 and above 30 years of age. The property qualification for *panchâyat*-membership was twofold. First, the person must own more than a quarter *veli* (5 acres) i. e. 1¹/₄ acre of tax-paying land. Secondly, he must live in a house built on his own real estate.⁵ The village assembly was thus not a commonwealth of all men, but a really exclusive institution, an oligarchy.

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¹ *Early Hist. of the Dek.*, sec. VIII. Evidences of *smriti* and *nîti sâstras* have been generally avoided by the present author in the study of institutions. Majumdar's references (p. 60) to Visnu III, 7, 11 and Manu VII, 115, 116 are irrelevant. The village, of course, must always have been a territorial unit of administration. But the assembly of the village folk is an altogether different phenomenon which needs a separate evidence, such for instance as can be furnished from south Indian inscriptions. His references (p. 66) to Nârada X and Brihaspati XVII are not convincing, for nobody is entitled to postulate about the constitution of a rural assembly all that is known about the gild organization.

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⁵ *Ibid*, 1909—10, p. 98; Aiyangar 169, 170, 173.

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Two classes of persons were declared ineligible for membership on the committees. First are those who were members before but failed to render proper accounts. To the second class belonged those who were guilty of certain grave sins. And an important constitutional procedure excluded from membership those who had been on the committee for previous three years.

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Impressive were the methods of voting and election for the constitution of the central body. "The village with its twelve streets was divided into thirty wards (the number of members is thirty). Every one who lived in these wards wrote a name on a ticket. The tickets were first arranged in separate bundles representing the thirty wards. Each bundle bore the name to which it belonged. The bundles were then collected and put into a pot and placed before the general body of inhabitants both young and old in meeting assembled. All the priests were required to be present. The oldest priest among the present then took the pot, and looking upwards so as to be seen by all people, called one of the young boys standing close by who does not know what is inside to pick out one of the bundles. The tickets in this bundle were then removed to another pot. After it had been well shuffled, the boy took one ticket out of this bundle and handed it to an officer called the arbitrator, who received it in the palm of his hand with fingers open. He read out the name, and it was then shouted out by the priests." The village was governed in this way by popular "representatives".

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Offices seem to have been strictly annual, and the officials were appointed, as we see, both by election and lot. The rotation of offices, provided for thereby, served as a school of almost universal education in public life and citizenship. The committee of supervision could thus become efficient in its control of the smaller committees. It is interesting to observe that the female sex was not under any ban in rural civics. There was no absolute prohibition against women as such. Inscriptions furnish us with references to women members on village *sabhâs*.

3. The Content of Rural Democracy

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Not of a trivial order were the functions and powers of the village *sva-râjes* of mediæval India. The responsibility on the shoulders of the rural folk, peasants, shepherds, artisans, craftsmen, and priests, was great indeed. In the eleventh century, the rural communes of Ceylon¹ ascertained the facts of murder and robbery and sat in session thereon. They were entitled to levy fines and inflict punishment on the criminals. And they were responsible for the execution of the statutes and decrees promulgated by "His Majesty the King in Council".

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¹ ^1 Aiyangar; Matthai; Majumdar; Mookerji's *Local*, 148—164; the long inscription found at Uttaramallur is reproduced by them all.

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² ^2 Aiyangar, 173; Mookerji's *Local*, 155—156, 160. cf. "*l'amateurisme démocratique*" of Joseph-Barthélemy, Infra, p. 147.

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³ ^3 Matthai, *loc. cit.* In this connection cf. the ethnographic data bearing on woman's status in Lowie.

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¹ *Epigraphia Zeylanica*, Vol. I, no. 21.

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The cultivators of Ceylon used to refer all questions of common interest to the local assembly of notables and elders. Especially in connection with irrigation did they feel the necessity for joint cooperative effort.² The communal administration of tanks was the normal feature of village politics. Repairs of irrigation works had to be done by all landholders each according to his share, or else they were refused water. Nobody was permitted by the *panchâyat* to irrigate fresh lands unless a surplus were available. In seasons of drought the peasants could claim only limited proportions of the diminished stream. The rural authorities determined with strict justice the rotation of watering and the order in which the cultivators would be supplied with water. Breaches of the irrigation regulations and thefts of water met with due punishment from the *sabhâ*.

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² Deakin's *Irrigated India and Ceylon*, p. 243.

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It can legitimately be generalized from over a dozen Chola inscriptions bearing on a Tamil village near Conjeeveram that the village *sabhâs* had in their hands full responsibility for the entire administration of the rural areas.³ The South Indian *panchâyats* were absolute proprietors of the village lands, with rights of ownership over newly cleared lands. They had authority to fine, in case of delinquency, the "great men of the year", i. e. the elected officials of the rural commune. They "received deposits of money and grants of land for charitable purposes, and administered the trust by a board of commissioners specially appointed for the purpose from year to year". They received all the taxes and had the right to render villages tax-free, and if necessary could grant to landholders an exemption from customary dues. Sometimes an independent corporation e. g. that of temple authorities was endowed with jurisdiction over certain lands by the ordinances of the village *sabhâs*.

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³ Aiyangar, 163—164; Majumdar cites several new inscriptions not exploited by other writers, pp. 70—74. Note the twenty references to village assemblies serving (like gilds) as local banks (p. 73).

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The *panchâyats* were also authorized to take possession of and sell the lands of persons who had failed to pay the Government dues for three years.¹ And of course local justice fell within the jurisdiction of these assemblies. Even in cases of murder they could sit in judgment, and what is remarkable, had the power to exercise discretion in meting out penalties. On several occasions the rural soviets of ancient Madras, finding that the murder was not culpable homicide, sentenced the defendants to simple fine instead of the usual capital punishment. And in order to carry out their decisions the village assemblymen did not have to refer the matter to the central authority represented by the royal officer.²

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¹ *Ibid*, 161.

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² *Ibid*, 168.

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No attempt is being made here to give evidence in regard to the existence of "village communities"³ in ancient India. The discussion as to whether and how far the lands were held in common and to what extent they were held in severalty is primarily of an economic character. This agrarian question of land-tenure is not to be confounded with the political administration of villages as the territorial divisions of a state. Communal proprietorship or no communal proprietorship, it is clear that the legislation of Ceylon and the Tamil Empire conferred immense powers of government on the inhabitants of the rural districts. The *panchâyats* as the "representative" *sabhâs* of the village people were very essential organs of Hindu public life. These were the principal agencies in and through which the masses could participate in the administration of the country.

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³ Jolly's *Recht*, pp. 93—96 (*Feldgemeinschaft*). For Vedic land tenure *vide grâma* in the *Vedic Index* Vol. 1, 244, 245. The alleged existence of "village communities" in all periods of Hindu history is taken for granted in Havell's *History of Aryan Rule in India*, pp. 31, 52, 69, etc. and in Mookerji's *Local*, 2, 3, 23—25, in fact, in every writing on Hindu institutions, without any evidence. See the chapter on public finance, *infra*. pp. 116, 123. *cf.* the discussions on private property in Lowie.

4. The Extent of Centralization

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There is a further distinction to be noted by students of constitutional history. In spite of the manifold privileges of self-determination, the rural communes of India since Maurya times must be sharply distinguished in political status from the "direct democracies" or patriarchal commonwealths of Vedic India and the smaller village or town republics of later times. For the *panchâyats* and the like associations were no longer the full-fledged "sovereign" bodies of old, but institutions of "local government" enjoying rights and immunities only within the bounds of royal or imperial will, viz. according to the grants of charters.

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The extraordinary authority which the village assemblies of Chola India possessed in regard to the distribution of rural lands was clearly defined by orders issued from the central government. Râja-râja¹ legislated from Tanjore that the land of those landholders who had not paid the taxes for three years "shall become the property of the villages and be liable to be sold by the inhabitants of those villages to the exclusion of the defaulting landholders". Now, if it was the royal will that conferred the right on the rural communes, it was also the royal officers, the *adhikârins*, superintendents or intendants that looked after the proper use of the right.

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¹ Aiyangar, 161, 162. *Vide Infra*, p. 102.

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And, as a corollary, the *imperium* or autonomy of the *panchâyats*, was legally subject to the control exercised by the imperial civil service. Not few and far between was the intervention of the supreme authorities in local politics, and hence the curtailment of village liberties. In 1230 the lands belonging to certain *drohins* (enemies of the state) in a South Indian village were sold by public auction. The initiative however was taken not by the village assembly but by the king who had sent eight officers to fix the price and conduct the affair.² In another village a new headman was appointed by the supreme government for the specific purpose of dealing with certain persons who were *râja-drohin* (traitors to the king).³ Sedition and treason appear thus to have been beyond the competency of the rural communes to handle. Even in far simpler matters the *panchâyats* had to feel the limits of their jurisdiction as but the lowest rungs in an administrative hierarchy. It appears that on one occasion some money ear-marked for a temple was misappropriated by the village assembly. The temple authorities appealed to the king for redress. Both parties had to appear at the capital. The king’s court found the assemblymen guilty and fined them. The money was eventually restored to the temple.⁴ Besides, the inspection and auditing of *panchâyat* accounts were normal functions of the Chola bureaucracy.⁵

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² *Mad. Ep.* 1910—11, p. 75.

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³ *Ibid*, 1912—13, p. 110.

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⁴ *Ibid*, 1906—07, p. 71.

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⁵ *Infrâ*, pp. 98—99, 112. *South Ind. Ins.* Vol. III, Pt. 1, no. 57.

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These instances give us an insight into the amount of centralization and administrative unification achieved in Hindu India under efficient and masterful rulers. More comprehensive and far-reaching had certainly been the nationalizing consolidation brought about by the Maurya emperors, if we can depend on the financial and land measures described in the *Artha-śâstra*.¹ Nay, it is difficult to believe that the *gopa* (village officer), the lowest grade member of the imperial civil service under Chandra-gupta or Asoka, left any important executive work to be administered by the rural *sabhâ* through any of its committees. Too thorough and exacting were the supervision and control imposed on the *panchâyats* by the Supreme Government. The village *sva-râjes*, those primary units of self-rule, must then have been reduced, generally speaking, to an atrophied state, the moribund condition, say, of the French rural communes under the *ancien régime* of Richelieu.² To cite a modern analogue, the *de facto* initiative and responsibility of the Maurya rural assemblies were not more real than is the sham "local self-government" enjoyed by the municipalities and district boards of British India at the beck and call of the District Magistrate.³ It is surprising and significant, at any rate, that Kautilya does not mention even by name these local nuclei of public life, although of course his silence does not argue their total annihilation.⁴

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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, 1905, pp. 7, 8. *Infra*, pp. 105, 121.

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² Brissaud, pp. 255—257; Goodnow's *Comparative Administrative Law*, Vol. I, 162—165.

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³ *Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms* (Montagu-Chelmsford, 1918), pp. 11, 12, 103, 104, 154, 155, 157—161.

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⁴ Majumdar's reference (pp. 59, 63) to Kautilya (Book III, Ch. X) hardly indicates the existence of the assembly and proves the exact opposite of what he intends to demonstrate. The Kautilyan village-headman as a limb of the imperial civil service was eminently calculated, as Tocqueville would have remarked, to destroy village democracy and not conserve it. From the standpoint taken in the present treatise Mookerji's characterization of Indian rural institutions as *sui generis* (cf. *Local* pp. 5—10, 23—25) is questionable. See Gomme's *Principles of Local Government*, pp. 35—109. Indologists who are never tired of quoting Metcalfe should note Gomme's remark that in England also the "localities" have "survived all shocks, all revolutions, all changes, and their position on the map of England is as indestructible as the country itself" (pp. 39—40). The notion as to the distinctiveness of Hindu development is due to generalizations not sufficiently founded on Occidental data down to the industrial revolution. An intimate familiarity with Greek, Roman and mediaeval Europe will bring out the fact that East and West were replicas of each other. See the comparative study of "private law" in Gibelin's *Etudes*. cf. Asokawa's *Early Inst. Life of Japan*, pp. 2—3.

5. Empire vs. Village in World-Evolution

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Since the publication in 1832 of the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons⁵ it has become almost a piece of sanctified idealism with foreign as well as Indian writers to wail over the disappearance of the "little republics" that are alleged to have been governing the so-called village-communities of India even as late as the period of the declining Maratha and Moghul Empires. In the light, however, of actual history based on epigraphy, as we have seen, the real self-sufficiency and genuine autonomy of rural *sva-râjes* must have been prominent by their absence during the ascendency of *sârva-bhaumas* like Chandra-gupta Maurya and Kulottûnga the Chola-Châlukya (1070—1118).

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⁵ Metcalfe, 1832, Vol. III, App., 84, p. 331; Romesh Chunder Dutt's *Economic History of India*, Vol. I, pp. 118, 119, 141, 206, 346—348, 359, 386—388; Mann's *Land and Labor in a Deccan Village*, pp. 150, 151; Maine's *Village Communities*, pp. 122—126; Coomaraswamy's *Mediaeval*, pp. 28—29; Birdwood's *Industrial*, 135—137; J. N. Sarkar's *Moghul Administration*, pp. 22—24, 78—80.

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Local self-government and national imperialism militate against each other, be it in southern Asia or in western Europe, be it under Marathas or under Bourbons. In so far, therefore, as the self-containedness and freedom of the village assemblies were facts of *Realpolitik* in the East or in the West, they are to be regarded as marks not so much of democratic independence or sovietic sovereignty of the people as of decay in imperial-militaristic pretensions and in centripetal activity on the part of the powers that be. The prevalence of rural liberties, whenever it may have obtained in ancient India, has to be explained more often by the temporary or occasional absence of the Hindu Louis XIV’s than by the conscious application of *laissez faire* and decentralization in local politics as the well-reasoned statecraft of successful nation-makers and empire-builders. Or, perhaps, in certain cases the idyllic picture of autonomous village *panchâyats* as a feature of old Hindu polity should have to be taken as depicting a “survival” in mediæval times of the more primitive folk-institutions of Vedic and republican India, untouched by the Samudra-guptan careers of the numerous *vijigîṣus*, Siegfrieds, or aspirants to world-dominion, and practically shunted off, like benighted Arcadias, from the main tracks of enlightenment and culture.¹ The precise amount of popular initiative and self-direction remains, however, to be worked up for the different epochs of Hindu polity. It is not safe as yet to generalize about all periods of Indian constitutional history in regard to the relations between national control and local democracy.²

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¹ Traces of old rural democracy can still be detected in the administration of certain socio-religious institutions like the gilds of *gambhîrâ* singers and playwrights in Bengal. *Vide* B. K. Sarkar’s *Folk-Element in Hindu Culture* (references to *panchâyat*, *mandala* etc.), pp. 20—22, 66—68. The socio-economic study of the village in Radhakamal Mukerjee’s *Foundations of Indian Economics* (pp. 441—445) is not quite correct in the references to western economic history. And it might have appeared a little bit too romantic were it not for the fact that the possibilities of the village as a political unit even under conditions of the twentieth century science and mechanics are being demonstrated in and through the Russian *Mirs*. *Cf.* Asakawa’s “Contributions of Feudal Japan to New Japan” in the *Journal of Race Development*, July 1912, Gomme’s *Primitive Folkmoots*, pp. 20—69, *Folklore*, 353—364 and *Village Community* 290—295, Seebohm’s *English Village Community*, 437—441, and Ashley’s *Surveys Historic and Economic*, 92—156, Carlyle’s *Med. Pol. Theory*, Vol. III, pp. 28—29, 75. *Vide* Lewinski’s *Origin of Property*.

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² Majumdar’s Ch. II (esp. pp. 55—85), full as it is of long extracts from epigraphic volumes which evidently have not been exhausted, is in need of a thorough revision and a more critical handling from the angle of constitutional development. Altogether, the view of rural institutions set forth by the present author is fundamentally different from the conventional attitude represented by all recent writers. The prevailing fallacy arises from an incomplete comprehension of the stages of constitutional evolution in western Europe and an inadequate analysis of the relations between the local and central governments during the different periods. The attempt at interpreting ancient and mediaeval Hindu polity in terms of recent growths in Eur-America is equally unwarrantable. A scientific interpretation of the mass of facts such as are exhibited by Majumdar and Mookerji will require a special monograph which it is not sought in this volume to undertake.

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All the same, the hypothesis can reasonably be advanced at the present stage of inquiry that India's story would but corroborate the trend of world-evolution exhibited by ancient and mediaeval Europe.

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Municipal Government.

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We need not wait to catch a glimpse of the epic capitals like Ayodhyâ, almost an "ideal" city under Daśaratha as described in the *Râmâyaṇa*,¹ or Indraprastha (near modern Delhi) and Dvârakâ, the seaport on the Gujarat coast, of the *Mahâbhârata*² fame. For, information is available in regard to actual life in the cities of northern and southern India from more genuinely historical sources.

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¹ *Vâla-kânda*, Ch. V.

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² *Jour. of the Am. Or. Soc.*, 1889, 174—179.

1. Urban Culture in Hindu India

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In Alexander's time and earlier, Taxila (to the northwest of modern Rawalpindi in the Punjab) was one of the greatest cities of Asia. The *Jâtakas* (Buddhist Birth-stories) describe it as a university town and the centre especially of *Âyurvedic* (medical) learning. Commanding as it did a strategic position in regard to the Afghan frontier it was selected as the seat of the northwestern viceroyalty of the Maurya Empire.

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According to Pliny, in the first century A. C., Mâdurâ, the capital of the Pândya kingdom in the farthest south, although an inland town, was in commercial and political touch with the Roman Empire through ports on the Malabar Coast (Western). Its cultural pre-eminence was marked by the activities of the *Sangam* (Academy) of Tamil literature.

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In Tamil classics of the early Christian era we have several model cities. Mâdurâ was famous for its lofty mansions and high buildings, Woraiyur for superb exellence in everything that contributes to healthy civic life, Vanji on the Malabar Coast for its commercial prosperity, and Pukar (Kâverîppumpattinam) on the Coromandel Coast for its excellent natural harbor which secured safe anchorage for merchant vessels.¹

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¹ Ayyar's *Town-planning in Ancient Deccan*, p. 16.

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In the seventh century Vâtâpi (Badami in Bijapur District) was the capital of the Châlukya Marathas. It was a city of international importance and attracted envoys from Khusru II (591—628), the Sassanian Emperor of Persia.² Some of the celebrated frescoes at Ajantâ in the Bombay Presidency were the handiwork of painters of this city.

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² Griffiths' *Paintings in the Buddhist Cave Temples of Ajanta*, Vol. I, p. 23, Plate V.

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One of the oldest cities of India is Tâmralipta (modern Tamluk), the seaport of Bengal. In the seventh century, in the words of Hiuen Thsang, it was situated on a bay and contained stores of rare and precious merchandise and a wealthy population. This is the port wherefrom passengers bound for China left Eastern India.

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Kanauj on the Ganges in the Middle-West became the capital of Upper India first under the Vardhanas and next under the Gurjara-Pratîhâras. In the *Harṣacharita* we have a poetic picture of the city and the district from the pen of Bâṇa. Hiuen Thsang found here hundreds of institutions accommodating 10,000 scholars in Buddhist lore. The city was strongly fortified and extended for about four miles.³

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³ pp. 81, 82; Smith's article on "The History of the City of Kanauj and of King Yasovarman" in the *Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society*, 1908, pp. 769, 771, 774, 782, 790.

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Ujjayinî in Malwa is one of the most well-known Hindu cities. It was famous even in pre-Buddhistic times, and became the capital of the western prefecture under the Mauryas. For ages it continued to be a commercial half-way house between the cities of Northern India and the ports of the Bombay Coast which had maritime intercourse with Persia, Egypt, and the Greco-Roman world. It was from this city that Varâhamihira (A. C. 505), the astronomer of Gupta India, reckoned the longitudes of the earth.⁴

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⁴ A romantic account of the city is furnished by Bâṇa in the *Kâdambarî* (Cowell's transl.); pp. 210—214.

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In Subandhu's romance, *Vâsavadattâ* (sixth century), we have a picture of Pâtali-putra (near modern Bankipore in Bihar). It may be taken for a poet's account for the closing days of the Guptas. We can wring out the solid fact, however, that the white-washed houses of the city were adorned with well-carved statues.⁵ In Vardhana times it was only a second city of the northern empire. From the Pâla inscriptions we can to a certain extent reconstruct the military glories of Pâtali-putra during its last epoch of political importance, namely under the Bengali emperors.

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⁵ pp. 75—76.

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In Pâla times the colossal boats of war on the Ganges at Pâtaliputra looked, as it were, like a range of mountains. So many in number were the dark huge elephants that the sun's rays seemed to be shut out by an extensive screen of clouds. The skies used to remain always dusky through the volume of dusts raised by the hoofs of countless horse with which the allied powers of northwestern India presented the eastern *sârva-bhauma* as tokens of friendship. Nay, the earth sank low under the steps of the infantry which the feudatory chiefs brought along with them when they came to the capital to render homage. And from their position in the high towers of the palace, the lions of gold which the kings, defeated in battles, had to surrender from their crowns were terrific enough to scare even the hare in the moon and to cause it to think of running away from its doom.¹

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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, 1896—1897, pp. 251—253; Maitra's "Bengali Ideals" in the *Sâhitya* (1916).

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The democratic spirit and militarism of some of the Punjab cities are testified to by Greek and Roman writers. Pliny's *Natural History*, and the Egyptian-Greek merchant's *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*, both of the first century A. C., as well as Ptolemy's *Geography* (140) and Cosmas' *Christian Topography* (535) furnish pictures of the material well-being and commercial enterprise of the townsfolk especially at the sea-ports, from the mouths of the Indus to those of the Ganges, including the island of Ceylon. And the Chinese scholar-pilgrims from Fa Hien (fifth century) to Itsing (seventh century) speak of the cultural attainments as well as educational and religious charities of the public-spirited citizens in the interior of India.

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But in regard to methods of city government hardly any details can be gleaned from these sources. We exclude, of course, from our present consideration the republican cities of Bihar in Eastern India described in Pali Buddhist books of the pre-Maurya epoch.

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An important administrative function of cities is to be read in inscriptions of the earliest times. We hear of a city council in connection with what appears to have been a second class town in the Western Deccan under the Ândhras. The institution was known as the *nigama-sabhâ*. The municipal corporation of Govardhana (Nasik) is described as being a witness to and registrar of the deed of gifts made by General Uṣavadâta (*c* 100 A. C.) through two gilds. The town-assembly thus became responsible for the carrying out of his instructions in regard to the charities.²

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² *Supra*, p. 36.

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Among the social functions of municipalities we have to note the endowment of temples out of public property. In the tenth century the city of Gwalior in the middlewest dedicated two pieces of municipal land to two divinities. And it is interesting to observe that instead of the city fathers themselves becoming the bankers they sought the cooperation of the gilds of oil-millers and gardeners with whom their gifts were invested for the permanent provision of oil and garlands.¹

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¹ Majumdar, p. 62.

2. Town-Planning in Tamil Territories

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Tamil literature affords us some glimpses into the wards, streets, sewers, markets, gardens, tanks, temples and public buildings of South Indian cities. In regard to Mâdurâ we know that the streets around the palace and other streets, large and small, straight and crooked, were provided with *puri-mams* (dust receptacles). Such receptacles were built of bricks and were plastered over with white lime. There was one *purimam* at either end of each street.² There was a deep ditch around the walls of the fort. Into this ditch was received all the drainage water of the city.³ "Red light districts" were segregated for public women with separate parks, baths and gardens.⁴

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² Ayyar, pp. 42, 44, 51.

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³ Ayyar, pp. 42, 44, 51.

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⁴ Ayyar, pp. 42, 44, 51.

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At Kâverip-pumpattinam the foreign (Roman) merchants were housed near the sea-coast. This was intended for the facility of collecting duties from them. Customs officials sealed the goods with the "tiger stamp" of the state. The removal of goods from the docks was forbidden until the duty was paid. The city maintained light-houses on the beach.⁵

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⁵ Pillai's *Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago*, pp. 16, 24, 26; *Ind. Ship.*, 135—137.

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There is an interesting account of the system of water supply for Vanji (Karur), the capital of the Chera state on the west coast. A ditch encircled the walls of the city. By a network of *tumbu* (conduit pipes) the water of the palace, public halls and private residences was conducted into the ditch. Those who could afford the expense had separate baths specially constructed for them in such a manner that water might be filled in or let out at pleasure.⁶

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⁶ Ayyar, p. 61.

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In Tamil books the cities of Madras are generally decribed in extent as nine miles each way or at any rate in length. The governors of urban areas paid considerable attention to drainage. Walled cities were universal like the polises of Greece. Hiuen Thsang⁷ also noticed the "wide and high walls" and "inner gates" of Indian cities. In his account the walls are mostly built of brick or tiles, and the towers on the walls are constructed of wood or bamboo. Walled towns and villages have been the rule since Vedic times.¹

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⁷ *Si-Yuki*, Vol. I, 73—74.

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¹ *Vedic Index*, Vol. I, pp. 538—540.

3. Pâtaliputra, the Indian Rome

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The municipality of Pâtali-putra, the Rome of the Hindus, was administered almost like a complex modern city. According to Megasthenes,² the Greek ambassador (c B. C. 302) to the Maurya Empire, the city fathers of Pâtali-putra were thirty in number. In their collective capacity they had "charge both of their special departments, and also of matters affecting the general interest as the keeping of public buildings in proper repair, the regulation of prices, the care of markets, harbors and temples".

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² Mc Crindle's *Anc. Ind.*, pp. 87, 88; Abbott's *Roman Political Institutions*, 280—281, 367—369; Fairlie's *Municipal Administration*, pp. 16—17.

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The municipal corporation consisted of six divisions. Each had five members on the *panchâyatic* principle. The first jurisdiction of the city government was industrial arts. The second division looked after the entertainment of foreigners. To these the city assigned lodgings and kept "watch over their modes of life" by means of those persons who were appointed to assist them. The city arranged to "escort the aliens on the way" when they left the country, or, in the event of their dying, forwarded their "property to their relatives". Foreign visitors were treated indeed as guests of the nation. They were taken care of by the city when they were sick, and buried under government supervision if they died. Census and vital statistics constituted the jurisdiction of the third board. The City regularly recorded facts as to "when and how births and deaths occur, with the view not only of levying a tax, but also in order that births and deaths among both high and low might not escape the cognizance of Government".³

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³ Law's *Hind. Pol.*, pp. 106—114, cf. Abbott, 192—193.

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The fourth board superintended trade and commerce. Its members had charge of weights and measures,⁴ and saw to it that the products in their season were sold by public notice. No one was allowed to deal in more than one kind of commodity unless he paid a double tax. The fifth division supervised manufactured articles which they sold by public notice. The new were sold separately from the old, and there was a fine for mixing the two together. The sixth class of municipal governors consisted of those who collected the tithes (i. e. the tenths) of the prices of the articles sold. Fraud in the payment of this tax was punished with death.

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⁴ Arnold's *Roman System of Provincial Administration*, p. 209.

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Heavy was the responsibility of this Indian Rome's *nâgaraka* (mayor) and city council. For Pâtali-putra in the third and fourth centuries B. C. was the largest city in the world. Its territorial limits were more than four times those of Periclean Athens (c B. C. 430) or of Augustan Rome (B. C. 27—14 A. C.), the greatest cities of ancient Europe.

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The story is well known how the first rude settlements of Romulus on the Palatine Hill were gradually extended until the so-called "wall of Servius" furnished the "city of the seven hills" with a circuit about five miles (c B. C. 490). Never was the area of Athens larger than this of Servian Rome. For about eight hundred years, again, the physical dimensions of Rome remained unchanged. It was in the third century A. C. that Emperor Aurelian (270--75) enlarged the city beyond its historic limits. The walls of the new city including what may be called Greater Rome measured a circuit of 18, 337 metres (about 10¹/₂ miles). The number of towers over the walls was then 383 and there were 16 principal gates.¹

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Let us now consider the size and area of Pâtali-putra as seen by Megasthenes,² and the magnitude of the municipal government would be apparent at once. The city was encompassed all round by a ditch, 600 ft. in breadth and 30 cubits in depth. The ditch was meant for defence of the city as well as for receiving its sewage. The wooden wall of the metropolis was "pierced with loopholes for the discharge of arrows". It was "crowned with 570 towers and had 64 gates". In the inhabited quarters, Pâtali-putra "stretched to an extreme length on each side of 80 stadia" (about 9 miles). "Its breadth was 15 stadia (about 1³/₄ mile). And it was of the "shape of a parallelogram". The total circuit was therefore about 21¹/₂ miles, i. e. slightly above the double of that of Aurelian's Rome. Verily, Hindu burgomasters must have had Atlantean shoulders to bear on them the financial burden and civic duties of two European Romes in one Asian capital.

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¹ Ramsay and Lancian's *Roman Antiquities*, pp. 10, 15.

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² Mc Crindle's *Anc. Ind.*, pp. 66, 68.

4. Specimens of Municipal Legislation

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If the town governments of the viceregal capitals like Taxila, Ujjayinî, Tosali and Suvarṇa-giri and other important cities of the empire were modelled on that at Pâtali-putra, we may believe that special attention was paid by the townspeople to sanitation. The health regulations were strictly enforced. Persons committing nuisance on roads, in bathing places, near reservoirs, temples and palaces were fined one *paṇa* (25 cents).¹ One-eighth of a *paṇa* was the penalty for throwing dust on the road. Persons carrying carcasses of dead animals on public roads were fined three to six *paṇas*. And the highest fine known to the Mauryas, that of 3,000 *paṇas*, was inflicted on persons who carried dead bodies by other than fixed paths. Houseowners were bound to keep the gutter of their houses in such condition as to allow a free passage to gutter water.² Violation of this municipal law was likewise punished with fines. Scrupulous cleanliness of the city was thus maintained by positive law.

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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, 1905, pp. 51, 52.

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² *Ibid*, 59.

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To protect the city against fire³ the inhabitants were ordered to cook outside the house. The fire brigade was very elementary, however. The householders were expected to have five earthen pitchers filled with water in front of the house. Nobody was allowed to keep haystocks, strawmats etc hard by. And in case of fire able-bodied citizens were in duty bound to help extinguishing it under pain of fine. Such cooperation with the municipal authorities was demanded of the people in other spheres also. Citizens were expected to be on the look out as to whether a merchant had or had not paid the toll at the customs office.⁴

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³ *Ibid*, 51—52.

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⁴ *Ibid*, 48.

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Every arrival and departure of guests had to be notified to the city police by the inhabitants. Failure was visited with a fine of three *paṇas* provided there was no thieving at night. The city kept special watch on the movements and whereabouts of hermits and ascetics. The names of spendthrifts and persons cruel in nature were entered on the municipal “black list”.⁵

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⁵ *Ibid*, 51.

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The city tried to protect the consumers by market laws both as regards weights and measures as well as prices. In regard to the sale of bony flesh it was the law that butchers must give towards compensation as much more meat as was equivalent to the weight of the bone. False balance was punished with a fine of eight times the value of the meat sold. “Profiteering” was carefully guarded against, as there was an official attempt to regulate the prices of commodities. The pious wish was also expressed that such large profits as are ruinous to the people should be abandoned.¹

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¹ *Ibid*, 55—56.

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The municipal register of the *nâgaraka* recorded not only the arrivals and departures of persons. It was a complete statistical gazetteer similar to the record books of the village-magistrate, the *gopa*, and the district-magistrate, the *sthânika*. The inhabitants were numbered as males and females. Their castes and professions were described. The number of quadrupeds in each household was noted down. Even the family budgets, the incomes and expenses of the citizens found a place in this comprehensive city directory.² It was on the data of all these local statistics that the national or Imperial Gazetteer of Maurya India must have been compiled by the *samâhartâ* or collector-general of the empire.

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² *Ibid*, 51—52.

Section 4. Supreme Councils

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We have seen that in addition to what may for general purposes be described as mass-meetings of the villagers and often as "representative" assemblies of the rural folk, ordinarily known as the *panchâyats* (or councils of the five), Hindu India was used to several other *sabhâs* or councils as organs of public administration. These were the conferences of the ecclesiastical associations (*samghas*), the agricultural, industrial and commercial *samûhas*, i. e. gilds or *śreṇîs*, and the municipal corporations of cities like Govardhana, Pâtali-putra, Ujjayinî, Taxila and so forth. The conciliar element in Hindu polity was further embodied in another important institution. This was the Supreme Council of the king or emperor.

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In regard to these royal and imperial assemblies, however, no olu constitutional documents or gazetteers have yet been unearthed by archaeological exploration unless the *Artha-śâstra* of Kautilya be partially treated as such. Neither the inscriptions on stone and copper plates discovered up to date nor the stories by Greek and Chinese travellers afford anything more than tantalizing glimpses into the institutions such as may have actually existed among the people.

1. The Tamil Assemblies

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During the early centuries of the Christian era there were "Five Great Assemblies" in the kingdoms of Chera, Chola and Pandya in southernmost India. The assembly of "people's representatives" safeguarded the rights and privileges of the people. The assembly of priests directed all religious ceremonies. The assembly of physicians supervised public and royal health. The assembly of astrologers fixed auspicious times for public ceremonies and predicted important events. It was thus similar to the Roman college of augurs. And the assembly of ministers attended to the administration of justice and collection and expenditure of revenue. Each of these assemblies had a separate place in the metropolis for the transaction of its business and holding its meetings.¹ All these assemblies were what we should call “national” councils, i. e., different from and higher than the village *panchâyats*.

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¹ Pillai’s *Tamils*, pp. 108—114.

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It is not clear as to which, if any, of these assemblies looked after the making of laws. Legislation may be presumed to have been the work of the “people’s representatives” who constituted the first among the five national bodies. But there is another point on which more light is needed. Whom did this body represent? What connection did these representatives have with the primary assemblies, the rural *sabhâs*? The *panchâyats* of the villages or the local soviets may be presumed to have sent up deputies to the capital in order to form the metropolitan assembly of the people.

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In any case it is apparent that representation as a political device has to be counted in its elementary form among the institutions of Hindu public life. And this representative system, in so far as election implies representation, was not confined to the national, central or supreme assemblies. For, as we have noticed in a previous section, even the rural communes were, as a rule, constituted on the elective principle, and not all village or local assemblies were therefore “direct” democracies of the entire folk.

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For the present, however, the Tamil “great assemblies” should appear to be the only specimens of “indirect” or representative polity on a national scale. In reality, details about supreme councils in other periods of Hindu politics are almost nil. But in Maurya India, as we can glean from Kautilya’s *Artha-śâstra*, there were two Imperial Councils.²

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² Law’s “State Council in Ancient India” in the *Mod. Rev.* for April 1917.

2. The Kautilyan Councils

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The first was known simply as the *Sabhâ* or the deliberative “Council of State”. It studied the “means of commencing operations” and “providing men and materials”. “Distribution of place and time” was one of its functions. And it also addressed itself to the “counteracting of disaster" and "successful accomplishment". The councillors were asked by the Emperor for their advice individually and collectively, and their opinions had to be given together with reasons.

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The second was the *Mantri-parishat* or the executive "Council of Ministers". Its functions were fourfold: commencement of work not begun, completion of the work already begun, improvement of accomplished work, and proper execution of passed orders. Members of this body did not ordinarily take part in the deliberations of the "Council of State" but only looked after their respective charges. On emergency, however, they might be invited to join the Council of State. The advice of the majority (*bhûyisṭhâh*) would appear to have often been rejected by the Emperor at discretion if some other course appealed to him as more conducive to success.

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