Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.33

c7.33

There are about a dozen passages in the Vedic literature which indicate that in the early Vedic period kingship was not hereditary in some political communities, but each king governed with the consent of the heads of families. Unfortunately, these references have been exploited by a number of noted historians to prove that in these tribal governments kingship was "elective" and not selective. We quote below the verses, mainly from the *Ṛg Veda* and the *Atharva Veda*, which have been utilized by Bloomfield, Jayaswal, Weber, Majumdar, Zimmer, Shama Sastri and others to support their theories: