Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.409

c7.409

Most of our material has already been used by previous historians in the study of the Vedic institutions such as the *sabhā*, the *samiti* and "popular" monarchy. In the preceding pages we have attempted to analyze the data from a new angle and the results arrived at are very different from those expressed by earlier scholars. These passages individually and collectively indicate distinct forms of aristocratic government which flourished during the Vedic period. However, there are many lacunae in the account which no historian at the present stage of knowledge can claim to fill. Thus, we are unable to locate these various governmental forms in exact geographical boundaries. The only thing we can say with certainty is that these four forms of aristocratic government were practised by the Vedic people in the northwestern region of India, stretching to the river Yamunā in the east and the Himālayas in the north, and centring on the land of the five rivers. We have attempted to explain the origin, development and interrelations of these forms on the scale of time, but can do little more than make suggestions which, in the present state of our knowledge of Vedic India and in the light of constitutional development in other parts of the ancient world, appear to be the most probable and convincing ones. The republics of a later period can be more or less accurately located and attributed to different ethnic groups, but they flourished about 300 years after the four special types of Vedic aristocracies and oligarchies had vanished.