Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/268

260 April Revtezvs of Books Local Government in Ancient India. By Radhakumud Mookerji, M.A., Ph.D., with foreword by the Marquess op Crewe, K.G. (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1919.) As Dr. Mookerji points out, the subject of local government in ancient India has both an historical and a practical interest. The earliest detailed accounts of the administration of village communities and cities are given by the ArthoQostra and Megasthenes ; and, as both of these authorities describe the state of affairs which existed under the Maurya empire at the end of the fourth century B.C., we have the rare opportunity of studying early institutions as seen from two independent points of view, Indian and Greek. Incidental references in literature afford glimpses of corporate life in its various forms at an earlier period ; while seals and inscriptions supply abundant evidence of the activity of guilds and similar associations from the fourth or third centmy B.C. onwards. Dr. Mookerji's survey is limited by the inscriptions of southern India, which from the tenth to the fifteenth century are the most fruitful of all sources of information. The systems of self-government, which communities, bound together by birth, profession, or locality, evolved for their own protection and for the promotion of a common welfare, were founded on the model of the family ; and they have formed a strong social framework which has resisted for ages the shock of political changes. The aggregation of village com- munities into districts, of districts into kingdoms, of kingdoms into empires did not affect the ordinary life of the people ; and a change of masters did not overthrow the traditional relations between the local governments and the head of the state. The nature of these relations in ancient times is thus described by Dr. Mookerji : The fact is that India presents the rare and remarkable phenomenon of the state and the society co-existing apart from, and in some degree of independence of each other, as distinct and separate units or entities, as independent centres of national, popular, and collective life and activity. Both of them were independent organisms with distinct and well-defined structures and functions of their own and laws of growth and evolution. The limits of state-interference were accordingly so defined and fixed as not to encroach upon the sphere of the activities of the social organization. A policy of non-interference was recognized as the ideal policy of the state, the functions of which were ordinarily restricted to ' the irreducible minimum ', viz. the protection of life and property and realization of the revenue for the proper execution of that duty (p. 3). In the pages which follow Dr. Mookerji contrasts the Indian guilds and corporations, which he regards as * practically sui generis ', with the