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Political Conditions and Institution
225 TAXATION
About the system of taxation during this period, we possess little information. Jatakas may be presumed to give us a glimpse of this age, but the information they give is mcagre. They tell us how good kings levied only legal taxes and how the bad ones so oppressed the subjects by illegal impositions that they would often flee to forests to escape from tax-collectors. 1
Besides the taxes, there were certain privileges of the king which he could use for filling up his treasury. The unclaimed property belonged to the king. If anybody died without heirs, his succession would devolve upon the king. Sometimes the entire worldly possession of a person who renounced the world went to the ruling chief.3 CONSTITUTION AND ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY OF THE REPUBLICS
Along with the monarchical states, there existed some republican states too in the time of Lord Mahāvīra. The terms Gaņa and Sangha have been used for these republican states as distinguished from the monarchical ones. A Jaina work warns a monk that he should avoid visiting a country which has no king, or has a crown prince as its ruler or two kings fighting with cach other or is governed by the Gana form of government. This passage denotes a dcfinite form of government in which the power was vested not in one person but in a Gana or group of people. These ancient republican states do not satisfy the modern definition of 'republic' in which the power is vested in the whole body of citizens. There werc republican states like Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Iscdicval Venice where sovereignty was not vested in one individual, but sometimes cither in a small number of persons or in a fairly numerous class.
There is paucity of evidence regarding the constitution and administrativc machinery of these ancient Indian rcpub. 1. Sec Já, IV. p. 300; V, pp. 95-9; 101; 11, p. 17. 2. Jā, III, 299. 3. Ibid, IV, 455. 4. Ācha, 1, 3. 100.
