Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.423

c7.423

In other words, it is most likely that the republican peoples of the Buddhist period had their origin in the Vedic aristocracies of the northwest and that their republican constitutions were adaptations or developments of the non-monarchical Vedic political communities. The existence of these republican states in the 6th century B.C. in northeastern India was thus by no means a bolt from the blue, but rather was the result of a gradual progress with a long history behind it, going back at least to the days when the earliest hymns of the *Ṛg Veda* were chanted.