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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s2.t1: 1. The Tamil Assemblies

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s2.t1

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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.

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