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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12: Chapter VI. Gaṇas or Republics of the Hindus (c B. C. 600—A. C. 350)

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12

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English

Contents

Chapter VI. Gaṇas or Republics of the Hindus (c B. C. 600—A. C. 350)

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Gaṇas or Republics of the Hindus

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The aspects of the Hindu constitution described thus far open up the norm in the *Realpolitik* of monarchical India. The rights of the people and their democratic achievements under Hindu royalties were generically on a par with those of the nations ruled by *le grand monarque* and such "enlightened despots" as Peter, Frederick and Joseph. The political psychology that lay behind the Hindu institutions was not different in any way from that of the French under the Bourbons or of the Germans until the War of the Liberation.

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India’s institutional experience was not, however, confined to the monarchical sphere. The Hindu constitution grew along republican or non-monarchical lines also.¹ Let us exclude from our present consideration the patriarchal-democratic "crowned republics" of Vedic India,² the *kula-saṁghas* (family-soviets or communal republics) referred to in the *Artha-śâstra*³ as "invincible", or the *gaṇas*, described in the *Mahâbhârata*⁴ as nationalities constituted on the principle of "equality". Epigraphy and numismatics are now in a position to safely declare that there were at least three periods in the early history of India during which Hindus developed the *gaṇa* or *saṁgha* polity of the Hellenic and pre-Imperial Roman type.

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¹ Vide Law’s "Forms and Types of Hindu Polity" in the *Mod. Rev.* for Sept. 1917; Jayaswal’s "Introduction to Hindu Polity" in the same journal, May-July, 1913, and "Republics in the Mahâbhârata" in the *Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society*, 1915, pp. 173—178; Mookerji’s *Fundamental Unity*, 74—75, and *Local*, 31, 215; Banerjea, 42—46; Majundar, pp. 87—122. The attention of scholars was first drawn to this subject by Rhys Davids in his *Buddhist India*, Ch. II, cf. Lal’s "Republican Tradition etc." in the *Mod. Rev.* (January 1920); *Pos. Back*, Vol. II, 46—51.

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² A. P. S. *R.* Nov. 1918, pp. 592—595; Basu’s *Indo-Aryan Polity*.

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³ I, 35.

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⁴ *Śânti-parva*, Ch. CVII, 23—24, 30—32.

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Republicanism in the Occident.

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But before proceeding to describe the republics of the Orient, it is desirable to have an estimate of the political mentality of republican peoples in the Occident. For, Eur-American scholars are likely to attribute the least undesirable incidents in the East to the alleged inherent defects of the so-called Oriental character. But they need only remember that the course of republic has not run smooth even in Occidental France.

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France was declared a republic in 1792. Napoleon, the first servant of the people, became emperor in 1804. His empire lasted till the occupation of Paris by the allies in 1814. The Bourbons were then restored to the French throne, and reigned till 1830. Thus, for the first twelve years of this period there was a republic (if the regime under Napoleon as First Consul after the overthrow of the Directory in 1799 should still be called republican), and for the next twenty five years there was the *ancien régime*.

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The July revolution of 1830 dethroned the Bourbon Charles X, and set up in the Duke of Orleans a "citizen king". Louis Philippe did not, however, play the president of a republic, as had been expected. In reality he extented for another eighteen years the one-man-rule of the preceding Restoration. In 1848 he was forced to abdicate, and the second French republic was established. This lasted for four years.

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In November 1862 Louis Napoleon, the president of the second republic, "managed" to have himself elected emperor. The second Napoleonic Empire went on till 1870. It was the defeat and capture of Napoleon at Sedan by the Prussians that led to his dethronement and the establishment of the third republic by the infuriated mob.

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The form of government at home often depends on the success or failure of a foreign policy. Under our very eyes William II's miserable failure in the attempt to wrench "world-dominion" from Great Britain's hands has led not only to a phenomenal democratization of the German constitution but to the subversion of monarchy itself. During the middle of the fifth century B. C. the Confederacy of Delos under the leadership of Athens, which had been at first organized against Persian aggressions, transformed itself into an Athenian empire; and Pericles, the first citizen of Athens, worked his way up to a virtual despot. But the demos of this the most perfect of ancient European democracies tamely submitted to Periclean autocracy because it was triumphant abroad and spread the reputation of Athens far and wide. Similarly the French advocates of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" cast their democratic principles to the winds while Napoleon Bonaparte was laying out suburbs of Paris and French "spheres of influence" in every country of Europe. Their cry then was *Veillons au salut de l'empire*. And if Napoleon III could defeat the Prussians at Sedan, it may be surmised not without reason that France would have continued till today to be a monarchy, no matter whether constitutional or despotic.

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However, it is the third republic that has been existing in France since 1870. But royalists have not yet disappeared from the society. Until 1875 the republic had to pass through great storm and stress. The Bourbonists, the Napoleonists, and the Orleanists were actively engaged in anti-republican agitation. Since then indeed the career of the republic has been rather peaceful. But this is chiefly because the three royal dynasties have become extinct. The last Napoleon died in 1879, the last Bourbon in 1883, and the Orleanist candidate in 1894. The agitators have not found other suitable candidates for the crown. But even today in the Chamber of Deputies there are parties which call themselves "monarchists" and "Bonapartists". A section of journalism in France has always been pro-monarchic (cf. *L'Action Française* of Paris), and strangely enough, the constitution of 1875 does not definitely provide for the perpetuation of the republican form of government.

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The political tendencies of the French people under the Third Republic are anything but democratic. The French are probably the most high-handed of all the colonial powers in Asia and Africa. This republic was not less despotic than were the monarchical nations in the treatment of the late Manchu-Chinese empire. Nor is it more considerate to the Chinese republic. The Lao-hsikai (Tientsien) affair of 1916 is a recent incident. And in spite of the solemn conferences and mutual assurances of the Powers at Madrid (1880) and Algeciras (1906) in regard to the integrity and independence of Morocco, France systematically pursued an aggressive policy in that Sultanate by which finally Germany was exasperated to bring about the Agadir crisis of 1911. Besides, "the tyranny exercised by the army, the alleged influence wielded over the army by the clergy, the fact that military organization is used as a means of propaganda for royalism, the vicious opposition on the part of the majority of the press to all truly liberal ideas and motives of action, the unscrupulous distortion by the same press of all facts opposed to its own ideas of patriotism, all these may be regarded as portents and symptoms of social retrogression".¹

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¹ Reinsch's *World Politics*, p. 73. In regard to the earlier phases of American *sva-râj* see the chapter on "Sham Democracy" in Walter Weyl's *New Democracy*.

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Such being the facts, it may not be quite fanciful to guess that if in August 1914 the Germans had succeeded in capturing Paris, as they had planned to do, probably the first thing that the French mob would have done after the defeat would have been to raise the cry, "Down with the republic", "Back to the Crown". That, however, is an open question. But it is a most undisputed phenomenon that none of the greatest thinkers and writers of France were advocates of a republic. Voltaire, the great intellectual protagonist of the eighteenth century was not decidedly anti-monarchical. Montesquieu was not an advocate of the kingless polity. His idealization of the English limited monarchy, as the system in which the alleged separation of the legislative, executive and judicial powers is wrongly believed to ensure the freedom of the people, is perhaps the most widely known fact in the literature of political science. Among the post-Revolutionary men of letters Thiers, though a critic of Napoleon III's absolutism, was a staunch believer in the principles of constitutional monarchy. And his rival and colleague, Guizot, the philosopher and historian, was the right hand man of Napoleon III in his almost Pisistratean "tyranny". And about the same time (1834) Victor Hugo was in a mood to idolize the first Napoleon. The cult found expression in lines like the following:

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Toujours lui ! Lui partout ! ou brûlante ou glacée
Son image sans cesse ébranle ma pensée

Napoléon, soleil dont je suis le Memnon . . .
. . . Napoléon, ce dieu dont tu seras le prêtre.

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Truly, the general and enlightened sentiment of the people in this first republic born in a monarchical country is thoroughly unrepublican. It cannot then be maintained that European temperament is normally congenial to republican theories or institutions.

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It is in the background of such facts that Hindu experiments in republican polity must have to be appraised.

Section 2. Three Periods of Hindu Republics

a) Third Period (c B. C. 150—A. C. 350)

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To begin with the latest epoch of *gaṇas*. The period of about five hundred years (c B. C. 150—c A. C. 350) between the fall of the Maurya and the rise of the Gupta Empires witnessed the growth and development not only of two powerful monarchies, the Kuṣâns in the Northwest and the Andhras in the Deccan, as we have noticed in a preceding chapter, but also of a number of non-monarchical states that were considerable enough to leave a mark on diplomatic history. It is difficult as yet to describe definitely the duration or extent of sovereignty of these states, but numismatic finds clearly point to the fact that the republics which struck coins in the name of the respective peoples covered in their en-tirety the territory separating the southern from the northern power. And in the middle of the fourth century A. C. they served to furnish the *ultima thule* of the Gupta Napoleon's ambitions in the western di-rection. Geographically, therefore, all the independent republics en-joying full sovereignty were located in the Southern Punjab, Rajputana and Malwa.

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The northernmost were the Audumbaras¹ of the Punjab with juris-diction over the Ravi valley. They began to issue coins as a sovereign state during the first century B. C.

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¹ The coins of these *gaṇas* are fully described with illustrations in a chapter of Banerîji's compre-hensive numismatic volume in Bengalı, *Prâchîn Mudrâ* (Ancient Coins), I. (c B. C. 1000—A. C. 1300), pp. 102, 104, 109—120.

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1. The Yaudheyas

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To their south came the Yaudheyas who were known in their heyday as the "heroes among the Kṣatriyas", i. e. the "heroes of heroes". They were an independent power by about B. C. 100.² Their territories com-prised both banks of the Sutlej with spheres of influence occasionally extending to the banks of the Jumna on the east and the regions of Rajputana on the south.

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² Cunningham's *Coins of Ancient India*, p. 66, 75—79.

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In the second century, A. C., Rudra-dâmana³ (125—150) inflicted a defeat on them, but centuries earlier they had come out brilliantly in India's resistance to Alexander. The *mahârâja* or "great chief" (lit. great king) of this *gaṇa* was elected by the people, and he was also the *mahâ-senâpati* (commander-in-chief).

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³ *Ep. Ind.* 1905—06, pp. 44—47; Gup. Insc., p. 252.

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To the south of the Yaudheyas came the Arjunâyanas.⁴ During the first century B. C. and after they were thus in possession of northern Rajputana.⁵

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⁴ Rapson's *Indian Coins*, p. 11.

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⁵ Banerji's *Prâchîn*, p. 109.

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2. The Mâlavas

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Further south, between the Chambal and the Betwa, were settled the Mâlavas.⁶ Their status as an independent republic began sometime during the second century B. C. In the first century A. C. they had to encounter a punitive expedition under General Uṣavadâta,¹ the officer of Satrap Nahapâna, for having entered into an aggressive war with his feudatories, the Uttama-bhadras.

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⁶ *Ibid*, p. 113—117, Majumdar 116.

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¹ *Ep. Ind.* 1905—06, p. 79.

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The western neighbors of the Mâlavas were the Sibis.² Their earliest coins also belong to the end of the second century, B. C.³

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² Rapson, 14.

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³ *Arch. Surv. Rep.* VI, pp. 200—207.

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The Kunindas had their territory most probably adjoining to that of the Yaudheya republic in the east. They held the upper doab of the Ganges and the Jumna, in close proximity to the foot of the Himalayas.⁴ Their earliest coins as an independent state were probably issued in the second century B. C. A neighboring race, the Vriṣṇis,⁵ was likewise a power in the second century, B. C.

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⁴ *Ibid*, XIV, pp. 134—138, 146; Rapson, 12.

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⁵ Majumdar, 119.

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3. Pluralism in Constitutional Life

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During the first century, B. C., therefore, it was possible for the merchants of *Madhyadeśa* (the "middle countries" of Northern India) travelling in the Deccan to tell the subjects of the Ândhra Empire that the "form of government" was diverse in the north. On being asked by Kapphina *le Grand* as to the name of their ruler, as we read in the *Ava-dâna-śataka*⁶ they had to offer in their reply a distinction between the states ruled by *gaṇas* i. e. "*gouverné par une troupe (état republicain)*" and those ruled by kings. The story of the international relations or constitutional changes of the period is not at all clear, really a blank. We know only that in the teeth of Samudra-gupta's *digvijaya*, "conquest of quarters" (330—50), all these republican nations succeeded in maintaining their autonomy by doing homage and paying tribute.⁷ That is, they lost their sovereignty and became feudatories or protectorates of the Gupta Empire.

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⁶ No. 88. See Feer's French transl. p. 337.

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⁷ *Gup. Insc.*, p. 14.

b) Second Period (c. B. C. 350—300)

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These last republics of India were not freaks of Nature on Hindu soil. They were but continuing the political heritage of their great predecessors. Probably the greatest period of Hindu republics lay between the fourth and the sixth centuries B. C. Those republican nationalities were thus contemporaneous with Sparta, Athens, Thebes, and Rome. And their ultimate extinction through the establishment of the Maurya Empire (B. C. 323) almost synchronized with the annihilation of the Greek city-states by Philip of Macedon at the battle of Cheronoea (B. C. 338).

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Megasthenes records the Hindu tradition prevailing in his time (B. C. 302) that during a period of 6042 years from the time of "Dionusos to Sandrokottos" a "republic was thrice established" in India.¹ Certain cities are also mentioned by him where "at last the sovereignty was dissolved and democratic government set up".² The Maltecoroe, the Singhoe, the Moruni, the Marohoe and the Rarungi were, as he says, free nations with no kings. They occupied mountain heights where they had built many cities.³ This is the earliest foreign report about the existence of republican states among Hindus.

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¹ Fragment L.

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² Fragment I.

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³ Fragment LVI.

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Nor had republics passed into the domain of legend towards the end of the fourth century B. C. For the India that was encountered by the Greeks who had preceded Megasthenes by about 20 years, i. e., who belonged to Alexander's hordes, previous to Chandra-gupta Maurya's establishment of the empire and expulsion of Seleukos the Greco-Syrian from Aghanistan (B. C. 303), was a land of republics and commonwealths, used to assemblies or senates and leaders or presidents.

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1. Patala

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In the estimation of Greek soldiers, Patala was the Sparta of the Hindus. It was a famous city at the apex of the delta of the Indus. In this community, as Diodorus tells us, the "command in war was vested in two hereditary kings of two different houses, while a council of elders ruled the whole state with paramount authority".⁴

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⁴ Mc. Crindle's *Invasion of India*, p. 296.

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2. The Ârattas

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Large indeed in Alexander's days was the number of democratically governed peoples, with the institutions of *sva-râj* (self-rule), though often of an oligarchic character. One of the most important of these nations was the Ârattas (*Arâṣṭrakas*, i. e. kingless) with their kinsmen, the Kathians. Justin calls them robbers and they are condemned as such in the *Mahâbhârata*. But they proved to be a powerful military aid to Chandra-gupta in his successful wars against Macedonians and Greco- Syrians. It was the splendid assistance rendered by the Ârattas¹ that to a great extent enabled the Hindu commoner to easily clear the Indian borderland of the *mlechchha* (unclean, barbarian) Europeans, and push the northwestern limits of his empire to the "scientific frontier", the Hindukush Mountains.

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¹ *Ibid*, pp. 38, 406.

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3. The Mâlava-Kṣudraka Entente

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Two other nationalities that have a pan-Indian reputation as having figured in the army of the Kurus in the armageddon of the *Mahâbhârata* happened to strike the imagination of the Greeks in an interesting way. These were the Mallois (Mâlavas) and the Oxydrakai (Kṣudrakas).² The former are described by Arrian simply as "a race of independent Indians". But the latter are singled out by him as by far the most attached to freedom and autonomy. From the military standpoint, both were very powerful peoples. But like Athenians and Spartans they had always been used to flying at each other's throats.

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² *Ibid*, p. 140.

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Alexander, however, had to count on a formidable opposition from them. For, as it happened, on this occasion parallel in Hindu annals to the Persian invasion of Greece, the Mâlavas and the Kṣudrakas "resolved to forget old enmities and to make common cause against the invader". The alliance was cemented, as Diodorus narrates, by "wholesale intermarriage, each giving and taking ten thousand young women for wives". The strength of the combined army was 90,000 fully equipped infantry, 10,000 cavalry and about 900 chariots.³

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³ Diodorus, XVII, 98 in Smith's *Early Hist.*, pp. 94—95.

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4. The Sarbacae

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Among the other republican nationalities of the time we know about the Sambastai⁴ (the Sabarcae?), on the statement of Diodorus, that they dwelt in cities with democratic form of administration, and about the Cedrosii (Gedrosioi),⁵ on the report of Curtius, that they were a "free people with a council for discussing important matters of state". Another race is mentioned by Curtius, probably the Sabarcae (?) of Diodorus, as a powerful Indian tribe whose "form of government was democratic and not regal". They had no king but were led by three generals who owed office to election. Their army consisted of 60,000 foot, 6,000 cavalry and 500 chariots.¹ Similarly, the Oreitai, the Abastanoi, the Xathroi (the Kṣatriya), and the Arabitai are four peoples whom Arrian calls "independent tribes with leaders".² Of these the Kṣatriyas were expert naval architects. They supplied Alexander with galleys of thirty oars and transport vessels.³

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⁴ Mc Crindle's *Invasion*, pp. 252, 292.

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⁵ *Ibid*, 262.

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⁶ *Ibid*, 252.

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¹ *Early Hist.*, p. 98.

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² Mc Crindle's *Invasion*, pp. 167, 169, 155, 156.

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³ *Early Hist.*, p. 99.

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5. The Agalassois

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Two other nations came to have close touch with the troops of Alexander. These are the Agalassoi and the Nysaians. The former, as Curtius says, put up a strong resistance to the Greek invaders, and may be taken to have been the first historic protagonists of Hindu *Bushido* or Kṣatriyaism. For when they were defeated by the enemy, these gallant patriots preferred death to dishonor and national humiliation. Accordingly they "set fire to the town and cast themselves with their wives and children into the flames".⁴ Thus, in the pride of nationalism, which was subsequently fostered also on the occasion of Moslem invasions in the Middle Ages, has to be sought one of the feeders of the custom that in subsequent ages came to be practised exclusively by women, viz., the *satî* (the self-immolation of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands).

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⁴ *Ibid*, p. 93.

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6. The Nysaians

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The Nysaians⁵ are described by Arrian as a free commonwealth. They had a president, but the government of their state was entrusted to the aristocracy. This aristocratic element was represented by the council of three hundred wise men. One hundred of these senators were called for by Alexander. "How, o King!" was the reply of the president of the Nysaian Republic to this suggestion of the Macedonian, "can a single city, if deprived of a hundred of its best men, continue to be well governed?" The reply was characteristic of the political mentality of the republican Hindus of the Punjab and Northwestern India who presented single or united fronts against Alexander's Indian adventure (B. C. 327—324).⁶

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⁵ Mc Crindle's *Invasion*, pp. 79, 80, 81; Arrian, v, ii.

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⁶ Smith's "Position of the Autonomous Tribes of the Punjab" in the *Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society*, 1903, pp. 685—702.

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7. Republicanism Militant

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This militant republicanism was no less troublesome a thorn in the side of the contemporary Indian adventurer. The task of achieving imperial nationalism that lay before the commoner Chandra-gupta Maurya was not an easy job. For in addition to subjugating the kingdoms and lesser empires that had been in existence since the days of Ajâtaśatru, the "new nationalist" of the fourth century B. C. had to make a clean sweep of the powerful republican states that enjoyed absolute sovereignty here and there and everywhere throughout Northern India.

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*Pax Sârva-bhaumica* could not be attained until the diplomacy¹ of his finance minister had extirpated the democratic *gaṇas* of the Madras (of the Central Punjab) and the Kukuras (of the lower Indus), the Kurus and Pânchâlas (of the Upper Gangetic Valley), and the Vrijjikas, Lichchhavikas and Mallakas of the eastern provinces.² It was not exclusively by methods of "open war" that these republics were crushed. For, like the latest expert in his profession in Eur-America, Kautilya was too proud a master of the "human nature in politics" to advise the use of "blood and iron" in season and out of season. The Macedonian "wiles" which made the oracles of Greece to "philippize" and Demosthenes to wrangle with Aeschines over a lump of the enemy's gold were accordingly reproduced in the politics of the East.

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¹ *Artha*, Bk. XI, Ch. I.

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² *Ibid.*

c) First Period (c B. C. 600—450)

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1. Eleven Republics

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This cluster of republics represented evidently the survival of a type of polity thad had been more or less uniformly distributed throughout the Hindu world, at least in the Indo-Gangetic plains. An older link in the chain of India's political evolution is furnished by the commonwealths of the fifth and sixth centuries B. C. And it is to the eastern regions of Northern India, roughly speaking, to the modern province of Bihar, that we have to turn our eyes for these oldest historical specimens of Hindu republics.

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These republican peoples were eleven in number.³ In regard to eight of them there is hardly any information of political importance. The Bhaggas had their headquarters in Sumsumâra Hill, the Bulis in Allakappa, and the Kalamas in Kesaputta. Pipphalivana was the territory of the Moriyâs, and Râmagâma of the Koliyas. There were three branches of the Mallas, one with sovereignty in Kusinârâ, the second in Pava, and the third in Kâsi.¹ The most important of these eleven nations were the Sâkiyas of Kapila-vastu, the Videhas of Mithilâ and the Lichchhavis of Vesâli. The last two were amalgamated and went by the name of Vajjians.

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³ Rhys Davids gives ten.

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¹ This is the eleventh. Jacobi's *Jaina Kalpasûtra*, p. 65. Vide Pandey's "Vajji Country and the Mallas of Pava" in the *Hind. Rev.* (May-June 1920).

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Readers of the *Kunâla Jâtaka*² are aware that the Sâkiyas had a fight with their neighbours, the Koliyâs. The *casus belli* was economic. Each state wanted to monopolize the Rohinî River for irrigating its own agricultural lands. Princes of monarchical states often entered into matrimonial relations with the leaders of these *gaņas*. The *Bhadda Sâla Jâtaka*³ narrates the story of King Pasendi's proposal to the Sâkiyas to give him a daughter in marriage. We know from the same *Jâtaka* that the Lichchhavis had a fracas with the generalissimo of the Kosala monarchy. The cause was the violation of a republican sentiment. The wife of the general had bathed in the waters of their holy tank at Vesâli, and thus defiled the reservoir that was consecrated to the investiture of the republic's legislators. The "marvellous prosperity" of the Lichchhavi capital is referred to in the *Ekapanna Jâtaka*⁴ which also describes the "triple wall" of the city, "each wall a league distant from the next", — with the usual gates and watch-towers.

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² No. 536.

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³ No. 465.

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⁴ No. 149.

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2. The Sâkiyas

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No republic in mankind's ancient history can surpass the Sâkiya republic in the magnitude of its influence on world-culture. For, the region over which it had authority has for two thousand and five hundred years remained the Jerusalem of Buddhism, the *Tien-chu* ("Heaven") of the Chinese and the *Tenjiku* of the Japanese. Sâkya the Buddha (or Awakened) was, as the name implies, a citizen of the commonwealth of the Sâkiyas. His father Suddhodana and cousin Bhaddiya were archons of this state. The common tradition that Sâkya renounced princedom is erroneous. For he was not a prince at all but only the son of a president.⁵

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⁵ *Buddhist India*, pp. 19, 22, 41.

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The Sâkiyas numbered one million strong. Their territory lay about fifty miles east to west and extended thirty or forty miles south from the foot of the Himalayas. The administrative and judicial business of this republic was carried out in a public assembly, the Senate. The civic center of Kapila-vastu, the capital, as that of other cities, of the nation, was the *santhâgâra* or the mote-hall. The young and old alike took part in the deliberations as to the government of the country. The chief was elected by the people. He used to preside over the sessions as chief judge. The title of the president was *râjâ* (literally, king).¹ It corresponded in reality to the consul in Rome and the archon in Athens. And if the emissaries that Pyrrhus of Epirus sent to republican Rome (B. C. 280) could not describe the Roman Senate except as an "assembly of kings" there was nothing specifically undemocratic in the honorific title of *râjâ* for the chief executive of a Hindu republic.

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3. The United States of the Vajjis

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The republic of the Vajjians was a United States of ancient India. It was a federation formed by the union of eight nations¹ that had formerly been distinct and independent of one another. Vesâli was the headquarters of this federal republic. The two most prominent of the members in this union were the Videhas and the Lichchhavis. The Videhas had once been citizens of a monarchical state, and their original territory covered 2300 miles. The Lichchhavis of a certain period used to elect a triumvirate of three archons to conduct their administration.¹

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¹ *Buddhist India*, pp. 19, 22, 41.

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The Senate or general assembly of the Lichchhavi *gaṇa* appears to have been a very large body. In the stories of the *Ekapanna Jâtaka* ² and the *Chulla-Kalinga Jâtaka*,³ the conventional number of congressmen or senators, known usually as *râjâs*, is given as 7707. Evidently the "young and old" are to be included in the huge membership of this folk-parliament. These *râjâs* were not only legislators, but seem to have been "viceroys" (vice-presidents?), generals and treasurers" as well. In other words, they were "given to argument and disputation" not only over the questions of custom or law, but also over those affecting the bureaucratic administration, national defense or peace and war, and public finance. All the interests of the state must have been publicly discussed by the central council of the republic.⁴ The cabinet of this mammoth assembly was however quite a manageable body. It consisted of nine *gaṇa-râẏâṇas*⁵ (i. e., ministerial chiefs or kings) to represent the entire state. Corresponding to the *Yajnas*¹ or sacrifices and anointments of all monarchies, Hindu and Christian, the Lichchhavis had an investiture ritual too. A sprinkling² of the senators with the waters of the tank at Vesâli was apparently an incident in the political ceremonial of the *gaṇa*.

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² No. 149.

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³ No. 301.

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⁴ The interpretation offered here is substantially different from that given by Majumdar (pp. 92—94). Here as in the Tamil rotation of offices (*Supra*, p. 54) we have to observe *l'amateurisme démocratique* of which Joseph-Barthélemy speaks in *Problème de la compétence*, pp. 11—12, 16—17.

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⁵ Jacobi, p. 65.

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¹ *Infra* p. 225.

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² *Bhaddasâla Jâtaka* (No. 465).

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Quite in keeping with the almost mobocratic consitution of the Lichchhavi Senate the organization of the judiciary was democratic to the nth term of utopian idealism. The Vajjian Confederacy acquired from the Lichchhavis their system of judicial proceedings described in the *Atthakathâ*.³ In order to be convicted as criminal the defendant had unanimously to be found guilty by seven tribunals of the hierarchy in succession, but if innocent, could be discharged by each of them. The officers who tried him in the first instance were called *vinichchiya mahâmâtta* (chief judicial officers). If proved innocent, he might be acquitted forthwith. But if guilty in their finding, he had automatically to face a second trial by the *vohârikas* (i. e. *vyavahârikas* or lawyers). The next higher courts to examine the evidence as to guilt were those of the *sutta-dhara* (maintainers of the Canonical *Suttas*), *atṭha kulaka* (council of judges from the eight clans), *senâpati* (commander in chief) and the *upa-râja* or vice-president. The highest court was that of the *râjâ* or president who alone had the authority to declare the accused guilty and was the final judge also as to the penalty. The sentence had to be passed, however, according to “case-law” recorded in the *paveni-pustaka*, i. e. the book of precedents.⁴

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³ Turnour's “Examination of the Pali Buddhistical Annals” in the *Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal*, 1838, pp. 993—994.

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⁴ The alleged Tibetan (Mongolian) origin of the Lichchhavi judiciary has been examined by Hemchandra Ray Chaudhuri in the article on the “Lichchhavis of Vaisali” in the *Mod. Rev.* for July, 1919.

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4. Division of Power

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It is evident that few, if any, of these republics had their jurisdiction confined to single villages or cities like the ordinary commonwealths of Greece or the town states of Hansa. The *gaṇas* have, generally speaking, to be treated not in terms of thousands of citizens, but of millions and not in terms of scores of square miles, but of hundreds or thousands. The Sâkiya and Vajji states should accordingly have to be understood as bearing resemblance to the Athenian republic of Attica (or the Periclean “empire” of Athens) and the “dominion of a city over cities”

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known as the republic of Rome, or to the extensive oligarchies of mediæval Italy named after prominent cities like Florence, Venice, Genoa, and so forth.

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The question of "local government" was therefore an important one to the *gaṇa-râyaṇas* of Buddha's time (B. C. 623—543). It is interesting to observe that the management of affairs of the rural areas of these republics was not the monopoly of the male sex. The laying out of parks, the erection of communal halls, rest-houses and reservoirs, and the construction and mending of roads between village and village were undertaken by men and women in joint committees.¹

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¹ Supra, p. 52.

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5. Śakya, the Anti-Monarchist

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The principles of the Sâkiya republic, nay, the entire philosophy of democratic republicanism found an able exponent in Śâkya, the Buddha, who, though he renounced the family-ties, remained an active propagandist all his life. And the propaganda embraced lectures² as much on constitutional law, trial by jury, *res judicata*, government by the majority, the importance of public meetings, and all other branches of civic life, as on the pathway to salvation and the elimination of misery from the world of men.

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² Supra, pp. 37—40.

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He had great interest in the welfare of the Vajjian Confederacy and was almost the political and spiritual adviser of its council of elders. During the last days of this republic, while it was singing the swan-song of its sovereign existence owing to the threat of Ajataśatru, King of Magadha, that he would extirpate the Vajjians "mighty and powerful though they be", it was Śâkya's anti-monarchism and republican fervor that kept up the spirit of resistance among the Senators sufficiently high to enable them to accept the royal challenge. For they were heartened by Sâkya's judgment that the Vajjians could not be overcome by the king in battle as long as their federation was unbroken.³

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³ *Dialogues of the Buddha*, Vol. II (*Mahâ-pari-nibbâna-suttânta*).

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6. The Civilization of Republican India

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The cultural achievements of republican India might easily be belittled. But let students of the history of civilization compare the contributions of the age of Hindu republics with the values of European culture from Pythagoras to Plato, and from the expulsion of the Tarquins to Augustus Caesar, such as Dopsch, for instance, describes in *Wirtschaft-* *liche und Soziale Grundlagen der europäischen Kultur*. In an inventory of India's contributions¹ to the spirit of inquiry and the progress of mankind the epoch of republics (c B. C. 600—A. C. 350), interspersed no doubt with monarchies, must be recognized as responsible for the anatomy, therapeutics and medicine of Charaka's academy, the linguistics and methodology of Pâṇiṇi and his scholars, the metallurgy and alchemy that found patron-saints in Patanjali and Nâgârjuna, the philosophical speculations of the atomists (*Vaiśeṣika*), monists (*Vedânta*), sensationalists (*Chârvâka*), and sceptics (*Lokâyata*), the schools of political science that came to be finally absorbed in the systems of Kautilya and Śukra, the legal and sociological theories associated in the long run with the *nom-de-plumes* of Manu and Yâjna-valkya, the elaboration of the *Jâtaka* folklore and of the *Râmâyaṇa* and *Mahâbhârata* epics, dramaturgy and fine arts of the Bharata² and Bâtsâyana³ cycles, the mystical militarism and *niṣkâma karma* or "categorical imperative" of the *Gîtâ*, and last, but not least, the *sarva-sattva-maitrî*⁴ (humanitarianism and universal brotherhood) of Sâkya, the preacher of *appamâda* (strenuousness) and apostle of *viriya* (energism).

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¹ Seal's *Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus*, Mitra's *Indian Mathematics*, Ray's *History of Hindu Chemistry*, Sarkar's *Hindu Achievements in Exact Science*.

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² *Annales du Musée Guimet*, Vols I and II; Text in the *Kâvya-mâlâ Series*; Sylvain Levi's *Theater Indien*.

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³ cf. Jolly's *Recht*, 46, 50, 53, etc. See also his "*Kollektaneen zum Kautilya Arthaśâstra*" in the *Zeit. deut. morg. Ges.* (1914).

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⁴ *Saddharma-pundarika* (Lotus of the True Law), p. 234; S. B. E. Vol. XXI, p. 222.

Section 3. Valuation of India's Democratic Attainments

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Intensive researches will no doubt in the future furnish a more realistic and detailed history of the popular institutions of the Hindus. It is not improbable that one day we shall know, age by age, and country by country precisely to what extent the peoples actually participated in the work of government.

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But already we are in a position to conclude, first, that despotism is not the sole message of the East, and secondly, that the West also has been the prolific parent of despotism. On the other hand, the democratic elements in the Oriental polities must not be interpreted too liberally so as to imply the "referendum", the "initiative", "gildsocialism" and so forth of the latest constitutional developments.⁵

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⁵ Dicey's *Law of the Const.*, xci—c; Oberholtzer's *Referendum in America*, pp. 1—44, 471—513.

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First, it need be observed that in monarchical India there was no *organic* connetion between the people and the council of ministers, and the council itself had its tenure under royal pleasure. The Oriental Richelieus and Bismarcks were, *in law*, no better than the "king's men" as had been the ministers of England previous to the introduction of the Cabinet system, e. g. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hindu ministers may sometimes have been king-makers and often virtually the rulers of the country; altogether, the monarchy may thus have been tempered by the counsels of the wise, the "virtuous" "guardians" of Plato's *Republic*. But the good government enjoyed by the people in a benevolent "aristocracy" or the enlightened despotism, say, of a Kautilyan *râjarṣi* must not be compared with the rights of individuals as modern constitutional law understands them. Despotism was no doubt modified by the councils, but they could not place "legal" restraints on the exercise of royal power.

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Secondly, the so-called village communities, those "little republics", were not independent of the kingdoms and empires. They did not enjoy the rights of "sovereignty" in historical times. In Vedic India they may have been conterminous with the autonomous tribes. Subsequently they may have continued for some time as urban or rural republics. But during the period under survey they remained normally but the lowest rungs of the ladder in a system of imperialism, i. e. of centralized national administration.

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Thirdly, it would be wholly misunderstanding the local and county administration of modern times, on the one hand, and the independent city-states and clan-republics of the ancient and mediaeval world, on the other, if one were to proceed to interpret the negative advantages of *laissez faire* due to imperial weakness as identical with the conscious assertion of authority by the people in the provinces. Compulsory non-interference on the part of the central government whether through lack of facilities for communication or through military incompetency does not imply such positive exercise of political power by the districts, cities and villages as is possible or at any rate as is being sought in modern nation-states.

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The development of *śreṇîs*, *gaṇas*, folk-moots, ministerial councils and the like should not therefore be seriously adduced as evidence of qualification to meet the problems of the republican polity with which Young Asia has to grapple today. Even in Greece the people have chosen to subvert the *gaṇa* and restore Constantine to the throne (1921). Asia's past political experience is of no greater value for present purposes than Greek, Roman and feudal attainments can possibly be to the modern Latins, Slavs or Teutons.¹ For, the modern republic, not to speak of its recent sovietic phase, was utterly unknown to the Occident until very late times. It is an essentially new phenomenon in world politics comparable to the steam engine, the parent of the "Great Society". To take an extreme instance, the novitiate through which the Orient has been passing in China since 1912 is not qualitatively different from that through which France had to pass.

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¹ In the controversy raised by the Montagu-Chelmsford Report the nationalist sentiment is officially represented by Sir C. Sankaran Nair, who quotes Rhys Davids, Havell, Aiyangar, Banerjea, Bhandarkar, and Jayaswal in the *Minute of Dissent to the Government of India's Despatch of* March 5, 1919, secs. 2, 3, 4 (*Indian Review*, July 1919), while the Anglo-Indian opinion is non-officially voiced by Mr. Vincent Smith in *Indian Constitutional Reform viewed in the Light of History*, pp. 18—21. According to the methodology followed in the present treatise both these viewpoints, in so far as they have bearing on the political tradition or genius of India, are fallacious extremes. The English historian of Hindu and Mohammedan politics manages, as usual, to ignore the despotism in occidental tradition and forget the fact that down to 1789 European masses, no less than the Indian, were as innocent of "elective councils and diarchies" as is the man in the moon of the binomial theorem. On the other hand, the Hindu *svarâjist* is almost inclined to minimize the unprecedented character of the cumulative assertion of the human spirit in politics from the American revolution to the Russian revolution. The problem before the descendants of Vajjians and Yaudheyas is today as easy or as difficult as that before the inheritors of Greek and Roman democracies. An appeal to history at the present juncture is irrelevant and useless.

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It is well to remember how the very idea of a republic stank in the nostrils of Europeans when the American republic was born. The general antipathy to the first French republic was as notorious as is today the sentiment against anti-propertyism and sovietic *svarâj*. The whole Napoleonic war was really a war of self-defence on the part of the trustees of republicanism against the enemies of popular government who were financed and directed by England. The Holy Alliance of 1815 also under the leadership of Russia was a union of monarchies, organized to put down démocratic upheavals and help the crowned heads. It was to withstand the effects of this "league of nations" that the Monroe Doctrine was launched in 1823 on behalf of the republics of the New World. In the history of the constitution, President Monroe's message belongs to the same category as the military challenge of revolutionary France to the ruling dynasties of Europe. Similarly the struggles of 1830 and 1848 had to be fought on every inch of European soil on the question of republicanism (at any rate, democracy or consitutionalism) vs. absolute monarchy. All these facts indicate the enormous opposition in the teeth of which the modern republic has had to grow up. They point also to the profoundly novel character of the theories and institutions associated with it.

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The modern republic is, in the first place, a country-state and not a mere city or clan. Secondly, and as a consequence of this, it is not a "direct" democracy of all the people sitting in legislative sessions. The system has its life in the principle of representation. Thirdly, it is not part of a larger whole, not a "home-rule" territory, but an absolutely independent organism, a fully self-determined or *selbständig* political unit, an unconditioned *sva-râj*.

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Only one republic of this type existed in the world at the time of the French Revolution. But the example of Switzerland seems to have played no part in the evolution of modern republicanism. The Girondist demagogues used to illustrate their lectures not so much from contemporary or mediaeval history as from ancient Greece and Rome. But these Classical republics were not republics in the modern sense of the term.

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Athens was but a city-state. It was, besides, based on a fundamental injustice. Under Pericles the number of free citizens was only 25,000. The number of slaves was then 300,000. Moreover, Pericles was all but imperator in name.

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Rome also had originally been a city-state like Athens, Sparta and Thebes. Subsequently, she became mistress of Italy. The Roman Senate was a republican aristocracy during the period of conquests — "an assembly of kings" as it appeared to the emissaries of King Pyrrhus of Epirus. But Rome did not merge herself in an "Italian" republic. Roman Italy was essentially the empire of a republican city-state over other cities. The "Roman franchise" was granted to the subject cities very sparingly. Further, with extra-Italian expansion the republic was converted into a formal empire.

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The Middle Ages produced several types of republican states, aristocratic, oligarchic, and even democratic. The chartered towns of England and France, the Hanseatic cities of north Germany, and the Italian cities like Florence, Venice or Naples, are the best examples of such republics. But the English and French cities never claimed "sovereign" rights; the German cities were formally "free" but actually semi-dependent, as they had to acknowledge more or less the jurisdiction of feudal lords, markgrafs, or emperors; it was only the Italian cities that may be said to have approached the ancient Hellenic city-states in real autonomy and independence. "North Italy is the only region in medieval Europe where the greater part though not the whole of a continuous territory is divided up into the domains of a number of city states just as the more civilized portion of ancient Greece was."¹

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¹ Sidgwick's *Development*, 277.

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On the whole, however, the mediaeval cities, because of their partial or complete sovereignty, were the greatest stumbling blocks in the evolution of nationality in Italy and Germany. It is on the graves of these republics that modern Italy and Germany had to be raised. It is evident therefore that these are not the prototypes of the republic as understood today.

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Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the Americans and the French had thus no precedent, ancient or mediaeval, to go by in the constitution of their republics. They were the first to break the ice. Not in a worse or more helpless condition is Asia placed today. Like the occidentals, Asians also cannot get any help from their own past tradition. Naturally, therefore, it is the examples of the United States and of France that have inspired Asia in the nineteenth century, as they have done the Latin Americans, in new political experiments. The constitutional monarchy of Japan, the limited Shahnate of Persia, the parliamentary regime of the "Union and Progress" party of the Young Turk, Chinese republicanism, and the nationalist movements from Calcutta to Cairo, are thus so many links in the chain of thousand and one influences that the East has been imbibing from the West in modern times. This spiritual conquest of Asia by Eur-America from Washington and Adam Smith to Karl Marx and Lenin indicates, therefore, the absolute limit¹ of the extreme claims that may be advanced on behalf of ancient Hindu achievements in politics.

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¹ Uyehara's *Pol. Dev. Jap.*, pp. 78, 79, 113, 114; Bland's *Li Hung-chang*, pp. 251—260; Macdonald's *Turkey and the Eastern Question*, 53—55; Vambery's *Western Culture in Eastern Lands*, 324—354.

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