The above three titles are essential reading for anyone interested in the history of democracy. When Steve Muhlberger and I wrote Democracy’s Place In World History, Majumdar (written in 1918) and Altekar (written in 1949) were important sources for us. The first book alerted us to the significance of the ancient Indian republics, which had become an unfashionable area of study, and were little known to historians outside India. The second provided a serious analysis of them, and demonstrated conclusively that they had to be taken just as seriously as the political institutions of ancient Athens. Ancient India was home to many hundreds of city-states, territorial states, leagues, and confederacies, and many of these were democratic, or proto-democratic, in the same sense as the polities of Greece. They involved far greater populations, were contemporary with the Greeks, outlasted them, and probably preceded them. Greek travelers had no difficulty seeing their close resemblance to their own.
It has been very gratifying to see that our little essay has contributed to a renewed interest in this subject. G.P. Singh’s 2003 book is an example of the renewal of scholarly attention. It’s a comprehensive survey of the existing documentary evidence, with something on every location that can be connected to proto-democratic, oligrachic, or conciliar institutions. This background knowledge is essential if any analysis is to take place, and Singh provides up-to-date information on these sources. It by no means replaces Altekar’s State and Government in Ancient India, which attempts more analysis and interpretation of the data. Altekar’s analysis, in my opinion, usually hits the mark. His reconstruction rings true.
Another book that was an important source for us was J.P. Sharma’s Republics in Ancient India c. 1500BC-500BC, but I haven’t reread it (I intend to). So if you have any interest in the republics of ancient India, start with these four books.
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