Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.505

c7.505

Following Roth, Jayaswal had suggested that the *vidatha* seemed to have been “the parent folk-assembly from which the *sabhā*, *samiti* and *senā* differentiated.” Professor Sharma does not support this view outright, but implies more or less the same thing when he states that “although there is no direct evidence to establish the institutional connection between the *vidatha* on the one hand, and the *sabhā* and *samiti* on the other, an examination of the mass of the occurrences of the word in different contexts would show prominent traces of the earliest folk-assembly in the *vidatha*.”⁴ In order to strengthen his case, Sharma seeks parallels from some anthropological studies of later tribal peoples, and further compares the *vidatha*, “in particular, to the religious functions of the early assemblies of the Indo-European peoples.” Then he appears to compare the *vidatha* not with the Roman *comitia*, but with “each of the thirty curies, which . . . had its peculiar worship and chapel.”⁵