The world had been told for a pretty long time that India taught the West the mystery of life and death yet she had not known herself how to live an organised life, socially and politically. In the first half of the present century distinguished scholars like Dr. K.P. Jayaswal, Bhandarkar, N.N. Law and others along with few western Indologists like Oldenberg and Rhys-Davids stepped forward to prove that this country had seen not only great monarchies and empires but had experienced various types of non-monarchial states as well. The present work is a venture towards clarification of some of the earlier opinions expressed in a nationalistic fervour. With the aid of scriptural, literary, historical and numismatic evidences it has been proved by the authors that very advanced forms of republics and many of its variations functioned here. Contrary to the common belief that they were all democratic-republics or oligarchies, it has been successfully established that they were mainly aristocratic-republics, with their special features. Besides, republican trends featured prominently in the education system, trade guilds and even in the rural life with its agricultural problems. This book is a critical analysis and evaluation of the political institutions of about one thousand years of our glorious past. It opens a new window to look into Hindu Polity in its historical perspective. The easy, analytical approach to the problem of determining the nature of the republican states from 6th Century B.C. to the middle of the 4th Century A.D. makes it an interesting reading for the scholars of ancient Indian history and polity as well.
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