Buddhist India

THE KINGS

WHEN Buddhism arose there was no paramount sovereign in India. The kingly power was not, of course, unknown. There had been kings in the valley of the Ganges for centuries, long before Buddhism, and the time was fast approaching when the whole of India would be under the sway of monarchical governments. In those parts of India which came very early under the influence of Buddhism, we find, besides a still surviving number of small aristocratic republics, four kingdoms of considerable extent and power. Besides, there were a dozen or more of smaller kingdoms, like the German duchies or the seven provinces into which England was divided in the time of the Heptarchy. No one of these was of much political importance. And the tendency towards the gradual absorption of these domains, and also of the republics, into the neighbouring kingdoms, was already in full force. The evidence at present available is not sufficient to give us an exact idea either of the extent of country, or of the number of the population, under the one or the other form of government; nor has any attempt been so far made to trace the history of political institutions in India before the rise of Buddhism. We can do no more, then, than state the fact — most interesting from the comparative point of view — that the earliest Buddhist records reveal the survival, side by side with more or less powerful monarchies, of republics with either complete or modified independence.