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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c9.s1.t3: (c) Gaṇa (municipium and republic)

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c9.s1.t3

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(c) Gaṇa (municipium and republic)

c9.s1.t3.1

But it would appear that people were using some of these terms interchangeably. The same institution was being described by different names, and the same name was being given to different institutions. We have just noticed that Vijnâneśvara uses *gaṇa* where Mitra Miśra employs *pûga* to denote the identical "group-person". Both commentators were right because their common authority Yâjnavalkya² himself was responsible for the confusion, as he had used *gaṇa* in the sense of a town-corporation. Nârada³ (450 A. C.), another jurist who preceded these scholiasts had also done the same. Indeed the same confusion is to be noticed in all writings on *smriti* (tradition) and *dharma* (law).⁴ Kâtyâyana similarly identifies *gaṇa*⁵ with *pûga* when he defines it as a *samûha* of *kulas* or families.

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² II, 8, 187—192, 361.

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³ Introduction, I, 7, X, 2.

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⁴ Manu III, 164, IV, 209; cf. also Śukra, IV, v, 59—62.

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⁵ *Viramitrodaya*, p. 426; Majumdar's interpretation (p. 94) of Kâtyâyana's passage is untenable; cf. Mookerji's *Local*, 30.

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During the early centuries of the Christian era, the term *gaṇa* appears to have been elevated one flight up in the series of "communities". From its status as the name of a *grâma* and *pura*, the *domus* and *civitas* of mediæval European jurisdictions, it came to imply also the *regnum* of a whole people, thus giving rise to another confusion in language. In the eulogies on military triumphs or other meritorious deeds inscribed by poets of the period we find the term being used to describe the association of "self-rulers", i. e., of "poly-archal" peoples organized on the principle of *sva-râj*. Republican nationalities of the Yaudheyas, Mâlavas and others are thus known as *gaṇas* in the coins⁶ and inscriptions⁷ of the Ândhra-Kuṣân and Gupta times. The poets of the *Mahâbhârata*⁸ also described the states in which all were "equal" by the same epithet.

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⁶ Cunningham's *Coins of Ancient India*, pp. 76—79; Rapson's *Indian Coins*, p. 15; Banerji's *Prâchîn Mudrâ* (Ancient Coins), Ch. VI.

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⁷ Fleet's *Gupta Inscriptions*, pp. 14, 152. *Ep. Ind.* 1905—06, pp. 44—47.

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⁸ *Śânti*, Ch. CVII, 31—32.

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Neither *samûha* nor *gaṇa*⁹ seems ever to have acquired the comprehensive connotation of *samgha*. But the diversity of Gierke's "group persons" in Hindu public life through the ages is self-evident. The attempt on the part of grammarians, logicians, political theorists and lawyers to analyze the concept of a public body and differentiate its various species is also significant. The story of Hindu public life has therefore partially to be sought in the development of *samghas*, *samûhas* and *gaṇas*,¹ the different categories of what may be called the Asian *polis*.

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⁹ Note the use of *gaṇa* in Jaina literature. cf. Jacobi's *Jaina Sutras*, 113, 273, 286, 306.

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¹ ^1 A brochure given over to the analysis of these and other new terms in indology from the constitutional and economic viewpoints is a desideratum for comparative politics.

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