Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.95

c7.95

Bloomfield’s support for this theory comes mainly from those Atharvan hymns where the people (*viś*) are said to be “wanting” or “desiring” the king (*vāñchantu*), and from the fact that this office is associated with verbs derived from the root *vṛ*.⁴ We do not dispute that these words are literally incapable of being rendered as referring to the people electing the king, but our main objection is that there is no other evidence for such elections.⁵ However, it is clear that in such tribes, at that time at least, the kings were not hereditary. They were accepted or consented to by the chief members of the tribe, as Geldner suggested.⁶