Evolution of Indian Polity (An Old and Rare Book)

This book contains the tribal state of society, elective monarchy, the origin of Kshatriyas, the people's assembly, the duties and prerogatives of the kings and priests, the effect of Jainism and Buddhism on the political condition of India, the empire-building policy of the politicians of the Kautilya period, espionage, theoretic depotism, the condition of the people -intellectual, spiritual and economical. In the last three appendices he has dealt with election of kings and delegation of sovereignty, sacrificial fasting as a form of passive resistance and state-ownership land.

This book contains the series of ten lectures delivered by me on the "Evolution of Indian Polity" under the Presidency of the Hon. Dr. Sir Asutosh Mookerjee, President of the Council of the Post-Graduate Studies in Arts at the Calcutta University in the months of March and April 1919. The first stage in the evolution, as detailed in the first lecture, is found universal and as such it requires no additional proof. The Institution of Elective Monarchy of Bachelor kings begotten by priests on a family of queens or cows as they are called, is peculiar to India; and no other nation has as yet been found to have passed through the institution of bachelor kings to hereditary monarchy which forms the third stage in the evolution of Indian polity. In all these stages, the monarchical element seems to have been under the powers of the Peoples' Assembly composed of priests, nobles (Rajas), traders and Agriculturists (Vis). As stated in the Mimansa Sutras of Jaimini, the king had no power over laud, and was entitled only to 4th of the produce.' Banishment or degradation of kings was one of the constitutional checks frequently employed for the prevention of the kings' extravagant proceedings and gambling and other vices.2 The same constitutional check seems to have been employed even in the few Buddhist republics that prevailed side by side with monarchical institutions. What strikingly distinguishes India from the other contemporary nations in the application of such constitutional checks as banishment or degradation of tyrannical kings is its calm and peaceful procedure as contrasted with the bloody revolutions accompanied with horrible destruction of person and property in other nations. It is Atmamedha, also called prayopavesa or the vow of abstinence to death on the part of the people en masse¹ till the removal of the cause of their grievances.