Jain Journal 1974 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 21

JANUARY, 1974
The Jaina Sutras are also important from another point of view. They refer to occasional periods of anarchy in kingdoms which were unsafe for Jaina monks to visit. In such countries they were liable to be suspected as spies. The six different forms of governments in this connection are the following: arāyāņi vā gaṇarāyāņi vā yuvarāyāņi vā do rājjāņi vā verājjāņi vā viruddharājjāņi vā.38 That is, those states of the arājatā form, those ruled over by the ganas, those ruled over by two yuvarājas, those by two kings, those called the vairājyas and those styled viruddharajyas.
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Excepting as regards the Gana States, there is hardly any agreement among scholars as to what exactly the other kinds of States were as mentioned in the above list. The first type of the State was evidently one in which there was perpetual misrule. The word gana was evidently used in the Jaina Sutras in the sense of a republic; and it is, therefore, not improbable that we have to refer the term gaṇa-rajya to a republican constitution of some sort about which no exact information is available in the Jaina literature. The term gana was used by Panini in the sense also of a sangha in which there seem to have been two parties, as indicated by the term dvanda, and an executive, as suggested by the term varga composed of either five or ten, or twenty members. 39 But more than this it is not possible to say about the ganas concerning which there is some indefiniteness among the scholars. For instance, the late Professor A. S. Altekar, while commenting on the same passage in the Acārānga Sutra, wrote that gana meant a democratic government, and that "it had a definite constitutional meaning and denoted a form of government, where the power was vested not in one person, but in a gana or group of people".40 This explanation is not helpful, since a group of people could agree to work together without forming themselves into a republican form of government. Villagers in India, as is well-known, have always worked in groups of their own. But that does not mean that we could consider the village communities as republican types of government.
An equally inadequate definition was given by late Professor Beni Prasad, who wrote of gana or republican oligarchies.41 A more elaborate explanation of the term gana was given by the late Dr. K. P. Jayaswal, who maintained that the Gana State was a Republican State ruled by
38 Acaranga Sutra, II, 3.1.10.
39 Panini, Astadhyayi, V, 1.60; Agarwala, V. S., India as known to Panini, pp. 428-434 (Lucknow, 1953).
40 Altekar, A. S., The State and Government in Ancient India, p. 70 (Varanasi, 1949). 41 Beni Prasad, op. cit., p. 357.