The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c9.s3.3

c9.s3.3

The origins of all this institutionalism are of course to be sought in the publicity work and propaganda methods of Sâkya the Buddha himself (B. C. 623—543). Sâkya’s father and brother were *râjâs* or archons i. e. presidents of the Sakiya Republic in Eastern India. It was natural, therefore, that when he fled the world and founded a *Samgha* (Order) of monks, the only constitution that he could conceive for it was that with which he had been familiar at home and in his own state. And as a matter of course he made no distinction between his own ecclesiastical order, the *Samgha*, and the contemporary republican Confederacy of the Vajjian States, when called upon to enunciate the “seven conditions of the welfare for a community”.