Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s1.t2: b) Second Period (c. B. C. 350—300)

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s1.t2

Language
English

b) Second Period (c. B. C. 350—300)

c12.s1.t2.1

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).

c12.s1.t2.2

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.

c12.s1.t2.3

¹ Fragment L.

c12.s1.t2.4

² Fragment I.

c12.s1.t2.5

³ Fragment LVI.

c12.s1.t2.6

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.

c12.s1.t2.7

1. Patala

c12.s1.t2.8

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

c12.s1.t2.9

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

c12.s1.t2.10

2. The Ârattas

c12.s1.t2.11

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.

c12.s1.t2.12

¹ *Ibid*, pp. 38, 406.

c12.s1.t2.13

3. The Mâlava-Kṣudraka Entente

c12.s1.t2.14

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.

c12.s1.t2.15

² *Ibid*, p. 140.

c12.s1.t2.16

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

c12.s1.t2.17

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

c12.s1.t2.18

4. The Sarbacae

c12.s1.t2.19

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

c12.s1.t2.20

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

c12.s1.t2.21

⁵ *Ibid*, 262.

c12.s1.t2.22

⁶ *Ibid*, 252.

c12.s1.t2.23

¹ *Early Hist.*, p. 98.

c12.s1.t2.24

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

c12.s1.t2.25

³ *Early Hist.*, p. 99.

c12.s1.t2.26

5. The Agalassois

c12.s1.t2.27

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).

c12.s1.t2.28

⁴ *Ibid*, p. 93.

c12.s1.t2.29

6. The Nysaians

c12.s1.t2.30

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

c12.s1.t2.31

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

c12.s1.t2.32

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

c12.s1.t2.33

7. Republicanism Militant

c12.s1.t2.34

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.

c12.s1.t2.35

*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.

c12.s1.t2.36

¹ *Artha*, Bk. XI, Ch. I.

c12.s1.t2.37

² *Ibid.*

Linked texts (1)