Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c10.s4.1

c10.s4.1

The Videhas are a well-known example of a state which had a monarchical form of government in the Brāhmaṇa period,⁹ but which had become a republic (*saṅgha* or *gaṇa*) at the time of the Buddha.¹ They were then one of the two most important members of the Vajjian Confederacy.² Although they are not mentioned as a separate people in the ethnological list of sixteen great regions (*mahājanapadas*) in the *Aṅguttara Nikāya*,³ the commentary makes it clear that they were included in the term Vajji,⁴ which had a much wider connotation than Licchavi. Most scholars have accepted the fact that the Videhas had a republican form of government during the Buddhist period. There are numerous references to them in the Pāli canon and the Jaina literature, but they are most frequently referred to in the *Jātakas*. They occur here even more frequently than the Buddha’s own people, the Sakyas.⁵ They also figure in the *Arthaśāstra*,⁶ though only insofar as the Licchavikas and the Vṛjikas are referred to, the latter including the Videhas⁷ and other confederate clans living by the title of *rājā*; they are not explicitly mentioned by name in this text.