Page:The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus.pdf/168



The aspects of the Hindu constitution described thus far open up the norm in the Realpolitik of monarchical India. The rights of the people and their democratic achievements under 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 until the War of the Liberation.

India's institutional experience was not, however, confined to the monarchical sphere. The Hindu constitution grew along republican or non-monarchical lines also. Let us exclude from our present consideration the patriarchal-democratic "crowned republics" of Vedic India, the kula-samghas (family-soviets or communal republics) referred to in the Artha-śâstra as "invincible", or the gaṇas, described in the Mahâbhârata as nationalitics constituted on the principle of "equality". Epigraphy and numismatics are 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 gaṇa or samgha polity of the Hellenic and pre-Imperial Roman type.