Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.552

c7.552

In order to show the *vidatha*’s tribal character, Sharma depends entirely on its association with *gaṇa*,² the term which he mistakenly interprets to be a “technical word for the republic” in the *Ṛg Veda*. His evidence of the tribal character of the *vidatha* and the *gaṇa* comes from a later source which gives 63 as the number of the *gaṇa* of Maruts.³ This is the largest number of the Maruts’ *gaṇa* we have from the Vedic sources. Thus, the dissociation of the *vidatha* from the most common terms for the tribe, i.e. *jana* and *viś*, and the largest number of members of a *gaṇa* being too small even to form a settlement, forbid all attempts at making the *vidatha* a tribal folk-assembly of the Vedic people.