The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s1.t3.13

c12.s1.t3.13

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.