The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s1.t2.1

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).