The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c7.s1.3

c7.s1.3

[It is clear that political development in India was not a continuous growth.] Students of history will not find in it the simplicity and unity that characterize, generally speaking, the dynastic history of Japan, or still better, of China from the days of Tsin Shi Hwang-ti (B. C. 222). We have here all the complications and intricacies of the Byzantine empire and the Caliphate.¹ The inextricable cobwebs of diplomatic intercourse that Europe witnessed in the Middle Ages owing to the rivalry among the Christian empires and kingdoms on the one hand, and their relations of intrigue with the competing Moslem nationalities on the other, repeated themselves in the military annals of Hindus also and subsequently of Hindus and Mohammedans. Nay, from the standpoint of the political centre of gravity and *status quo*, the picture of India’s state-systems is as bewilderingly varied and diversified as is that of the western world from the armageddon of the Homeric epics down to the world war against Germany. Nothing short of the kaleidoscopic changes in Freeman’s *Historical Geography of Europe* can therefore fitly portray the multitudinous ups and downs of “races” and “classes” in India through the ages.