Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.519

c7.519

Moreover, the comparison of the "earliest known Greek, Roman and German popular assemblies" is not suitable because they were political institutions. A more approximate comparison of these popular assemblies would be with the Vedic *samiti*. Sharma admits that, unlike the *sabhā* and the *samiti*, there is "no direct evidence of its (the *vidatha's*) tribal character",² but he tries to show that "the association of the *gaṇa* with the *vidatha* may be taken as indirect evidence" of this.³ The term *gaṇa* here⁴ simply means a group of people, and not "tribal groups", as Sharma interprets it.