It seems there was some kind of democracy in Indian regions even in 300BC when Alexander invaded India but returned. However, it seems Patna, the capital of Bihar and then capital of India - has gone tremendous transformation to become a wild west zone.
BACKGROUND For the past few days I have been reading Lives - by Plutarch (who wrote about lives of ancient Greeks). My interest was for two reasons. More recetnly I had read some article in the website Infinity Foundation showing that Western Univs made it compulsory for all students to study Roman and Greek literature -projected as bedrocks for Western civilization. The author argued that this was the reason why Oriental culture was given second hand treatment. Thus, a new way of learning about Western civilization seemed thru Greek and Roman literature. My father has a book, hard-bound and quite old. It is called Plutarch's Lives. I have seen it with him as long as I can remember. As a high schooler I had tried to read a bit but had found it dry and historical. Now, I am based in a culture steeped in Roman and Greek traditions -so might prove to be useful. Some amazing facts that if Plutarch's Lives is considered to be a historical source then it is as full of myths as is Mahabharat (giving credit to divine beings for human successes). The people are those who ruled Athens and have statues in their honor. I just read the first two biographies - Themistocles and Pericles. http://www.bartleby.com/12/1.html Harvard Classics (free book on the web) It was surprising to me that Athens then had a better democracy than perhaps in India today - the way voting was done, how people were educated and aware. However, suspicion and gossip played a role too - getting their top general kicked out and given death sentence who ran to enemy Persian king who gave him support (later demanded that the Greek fight against Greeks. He took poison.). Pericles was more diplomatic but even he was thrown down when he lost a war and his supporters /team members died of plague. DEMOCRACY in ANCIENT INDIA http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITdemocracyindiaframeset.htm "But the literature, Pali and Sanskrit, Buddhist and Brahmanical, shows that non-monarchical forms of government were omnipresent. There was a complex vocabulary to describe the different types of groups that ran their own affairs.16 Some of these were obviously warrior bands; 17 others more peaceful groups with economic goals; some religious brotherhoods. Such an organization, of whatever type, could be designated, almost indifferently, as a gana or a sangha; and similar though less important bodies were labeled with the terms sreni, puga, or vrata. Gana and sangha, the most important of these terms, originally meant "multitude." By the sixth century B.C., these words meant both a self-governing multitude, in which decisions were made by the members working in common, and the style of government characteristic of such groups. In the case of the strongest of such groups, which acted as sovereign governments, the words are best translated as "republic." That there were many sovereign republics in India is easily demonstrated from a number of sources. Perhaps it is best to begin with the Greek evidence, even though it is not the earliest, simply because the Greek writers spoke in a political language that is familiar. Perhaps the most useful Greek account of India is Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander , which describes the Macedonian conqueror's campaigns in great detail. The Anabasis, which is derived from the eyewitness accounts of Alexander's companions, 18 portrays him as meeting "free and independent" Indian communities at every turn. What "free and independent" meant is illustrated from the case of Nysa, a city on the border of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan that was ruled by a president named Aculphis and a council of 300. After surrendering to Alexander, Aculphis used the city's supposed connection with the god Dionysus to seek lenient terms from the king: "The Nysaeans beseech thee, O king out of respect for Dionysus, to allow them to remain free and independent; for when Dionysus had subjugated the nation of the Indians...he founded this city from the soldiers who had become unfit for military service ...From that time we inhabit Nysa, a free city, and we ourselves are independent, conducting our government with constitutional order."19 Nysa was in Greek terms an oligarchy, as further discussion between Alexander and Aculphis reveals, and a single-city state. There were other Indian states that were both larger in area and wider in franchise. It is clear from Arrian that the Mallian republic consisted of a number of cities.20 Q. Curtius Rufus and Diodorus Siculus in their histories of Alexander mention a people called the Sabarcae or Sambastai among whom "the form of government was democratic and not regal." 21 The Sabarcae/Sambastai, like the Mallians, had a large state. Their army consisted of 60,000 foot, 6000 cavalry, and 500 chariots.22 Thus Indian republics of the late fourth century could be much larger than the contemporaneous Greek polis . And it seems that in the northwestern part of India, republicanism was the norm. Alexander's historians mention a large number of republics, some named, some not, but only a handful of kings.23 The prevalence of republicanism and its democratic form is explicitly stated by Diodorus Siculus. After describing the mythical monarchs who succeeded the god Dionysus as rulers of India, he says: At last, however, after many years had gone, most of the cities adopted the democratic form of government, though some retained the kingly until the invasion of the country by Alexander.24 What makes this statement particularly interesting is that it seems to derive from a first-hand description of India by a Greek traveler named Megasthenes. Around 300 B.C., about two decades after Alexander's invasion, Megasthenes served as ambassador of the Greek king Seleucus Nicator to the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya, and in the course of his duties crossed northern India to the eastern city of Patna, where he lived for a while.25 If this statement is drawn from Megasthenes, then the picture of a northwestern India dominated by republics must be extended to the entire northern half of the subcontinent.26" Umesh Sharma Washington D.C. 1-202-215-4328 [Cell] Ed.M. - International Education Policy Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Class of 2005 http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info) http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info) www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used ) http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/ http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/ --------------------------------- Rise to the challenge for Sport Relief with Yahoo! for Good _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
