Page:The Ganas or Republics of Ancient India.pdf/4

266 Roman Senate except as an "assembly of kings", there was nothing specifically undemocratic in the honorific title of rājā for the chief executive of a Hindu republic.

The republic of the Vajjians was a United States of ancient India. It was a federation formed by the union of eight clans that had formerly been distinct and independent of one another. Vesali was the headquarters of this federal republic. The two most prominent of the members of this union were the Videhas and the Lichchhavis. The Videhas had once been citizens of a monarchical state, and their original territory covered 2300 miles. The Lichchhavis used to elect a triumvirate of three archons to conduct their administration. $25$

The principles of the Sākiya republic, nay, the entire philosophy of democratic republicanism, found an able exponent in Shākya, the Buddha, who though he renounced the family-ties, remained an active propagandist all his life. And the propaganda embraced lectures $26$  on constitutional law, trial by jury, res judicata, government by the majority, the importance of public meetings, and all other branches of civic life as much as on the pathway to salvation and the elimination of misery from the world of men. He had great interest in the welfare of the Vajjian Confederacy and was almost the political and spiritual adviser of its Council of elders. During the last days of this republic, while it was singing the swan-song of its sovereign existence owing to the threat of Ajātashatru, King of Magadha, that he would extirpate the Vajjians, "mighty and powerful though they be," it was Shākya's anti-monarchism and republican fervor that kept up the spirit of resistance among the elders sufficiently high to accept the royal challenge. For they were heartened by Shākya's judgment that the Vajjians could not be overcome by the king in battle as long as their federation was unbroken. $27$

We have a picture of ultra-democratic judicial proceedings $28$  at the mote-hall of the Vajjian Confederacy. A succession of regularly appointed officers administered the criminal law. These were the justices, the lawyers, the rehearsers of the law maxims, the council of the representatives of the eight clans constituting the union, the vice-consul, and the rājā or consul himself. The accused could be acquitted by each of these officers of the hierarchy. But if they considered him guilty, each had to refer the case to the next higher authority. The president of the republic was the final judge as to the penalty in accordance with the law of precedents.

It is interesting to observe that the management of affairs of the rural areas of these republics was not the monopoly of the male sex. Women also were proud to bear a part in works of public utility. The laying out of parks, the erection of communal halls, rest-houses and reservoirs, and the construction and mending of roads between village and village were undertaken by men and women in joint committees. $29$

The cultural achievements of republican India might easily be belittled. But let students of the history of civilization compare the contributions of the age of Hindu republics with the values of European culture from Pythagoras to Plato. In an inventory of India's contributions $30$  to the spirit of inquiry and the progress of mankind, the epoch of republics (C. B. C. 600-322), interspersed no doubt with monarchies, must be recognized as responsible for the beginnings of the anatomy, therapeutics and medicine of Charaka's academy, of the linguistics and methodology of Pānini and his scholars, and of the metallurgy and alchemy that subsequently found patron-saints in Patanjali and Nāgārjoona, the philosophical speculations of the atomists (Vaishesika), monists (Vedānta), sensationalists (Chārvāka) and sceptics (Lok yata), the schools of political science that came to be finally absorbed in the systems of Kautilya and Shookra, $31$   the legal and sociological theories associated in the long run with the nom-de-plumes of Manu and Yājnavalkya $32$   the elaboration of the Jātaka folklore and of the Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata epics, the foundations of dramaturgy and fine arts in the Bharata and Bātsāyana cycles, the origins of the