Page:The Ganas or Republics of Ancient India.pdf/1

Rh This was a new defeat to her. She had thought that she would cool her burning heart in Rajani's tears, but for each single drop that fell out of Rajani's eyes, Lakshmi shed a thousand. Rajani wept because she had lost her beloved; and Mahalakshmi's life became flooded with tears–while her mutilated soul gasped. "Ah beloved, I am your murderess!"

Translated from the original Bengali by

 

TUDENTS of comparative politics are generally familiar with the norm in the Realpolitik of monarchical India. It is well known that the rights of the people and then institutional achievements under the Hindu royalties were generically on a par with those of the nations ruled by le grand monarque and such “enlightened despots” as Peter, Frederick and Joseph. The political psychology that lay behind the Hindu institutions was not different in any way from that of the French under the Bourbons or of the Germans till the War of the Liberation.

But it is hardly known among scholars that the Hindu constitution grew along republican or non-monarchical lines also. $1$  Let us exclude from our present consideration the patriarchal-democratic "crowned republics" of Vedic India, as well as the vairājya or kingless states mentioned in the Aitareya Brāhmana, $2$   the koola-samghas $3$   (family-soviets or communal republics) and ganas $4$   referred to in the Artha-shastra, or the nationalities described in the Mahábhārata $5$   as "invincible" because of their being constituted on the principle of "equality". Archaeology is now in a position to safely declare that there were at least three periods in the early history of India during which Hindus developed the vairājya or gana polity of the Hellenic and pre-Imperial Roman type.

To begin with the latest. In the fourth century A. D. there were "independent" republics with full sovereignty in the Punjab, Eastern Rajputana and Malwa. The central parts of the Punjab were held by the commonwealth of Madrakas. The Yaudheyas $6$  had their territory on both banks of the Sutlej. In the second century Roodra-damana (125-150) had inflicted a defeat on them; but centuries before, they came out brilliantly in India's resistance to Alexander. The Abhirs and the Mālavas were settled between the Chambal and the Betwa. In the teeth of Samoodragoopta the Indian Napoleon's digvijaya or "conquest of the quarters" (330-75) all these republican nations succeeded in maintaining their autonomy by doing homage and paying tribute. But they lost their sovereignty and became feudatories or protectorates of the Goopta Empire. $7$

The greatest period of Hindu republics lay, however, between the fourth and sixth centuries B. C. The republican nationalities of India were thus contemporaneous with Sparta, Athens, Thebes and Rome. And their ultimate extinction through the establishment of the Maurya Empire (B. C. 323) synchronized with the annihilation of the Greek city states by Philip of Macedon at the battle of Cheronoea (B. C. 338).

Megasthenes records the Hindu tradition prevailing in his time (B. C. 302) that during a period of 6042 years from the time of "Dionusos to Sandrokottos"