Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c6.s2.56

c6.s2.56

Ideally, all these republics should have been treated in one volume and we started our research with this in mind. But there is enough to be said about these republics to fill two books of reasonable size. Therefore, we have confined ourselves to the governments by discussion in the early Vedic and the Buddhist periods alone. The subject matter of our study, then is: the problems connected with the constitutional development of Vedic institutions, the question whether or not the Vedic monarchy was elective, the manner in which the Vedic aristocracies were organized, the relationship between the Vedic and the northeastern republics, the controversial issue whether or not the *vidatha* was the earliest folk-assembly of the Indo-Aryans, the method by which the northeastern republics were administered, the constant struggle that went on between the republicanists and the monarchists, what wrought the fall of the republics, and some other allied topics of historical importance.