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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t1: 1. Pre-Imperial Local Units

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t1

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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.

Cites (3)