The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s1.t3: c) First Period (c B. C. 600—450)

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s1.t3

Language: English

c) First Period (c B. C. 600—450)

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).

Linked texts (14)

Jātaka — Pāli
Carakasaṃhitā — Agniveśa (Āyurveda) & Caraka, Sanskrit
Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit
Nāṭyaśāstra — Bharata, Sanskrit
Aṣṭādhyāyī — Pāṇini, Sanskrit
Mānava Dharmaśāstra — Manu & Bhṛgu, Sanskrit
Yājñavalkyasmṛti — Yājñavalkya, Sanskrit
Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra — Sanskrit
Kāmasūtra — Vātsyāyana Mallanāga, Sanskrit
Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
Bhagavadgītā — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Vaiśālī
Kapilavastu