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VAISALI AND VRIJI POLITICS
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as having actually ruled as monarchs in North Bihar. A king named Sahadeva Sarñjaya is mentioned in the Satapatha Brahmana.1 In the Aitareya Brahmana2 he is mentioned with Somaka Sahadevya. None of these kings, however, are connected with Vaiśali in the Vedic literature. The Mahabharata speaks of a Sahadeva (son of Sriñjaya) as sacrificing on the Jumna, and not on the Gandak. The presence of Ikshvakuids as a constituent element of the Vriji confederacy, which had its metropolis at Vaiśāli, is, however, as already stated, suggested by the Sutrakritanga. ✔The
The Vrijian confederation must have been organised after the decline and fall of the royal houses of Videha. Political evolution in India thus resembles closely the developments in the ancient cities of Greece where also the monarchies of the Heroic Age were succeeded by aristocratic republics. The probable causes of the transformation in Greece are thus given by Bury: "In some cases gross misrule may have led to the violent deposition of a king; in other cases if the succession to the sceptre devolved upon an infant or a paltry man, the nobles may have taken it upon themselves to abolish the monarchy. In some cases, the rights of the king might be strictly limited in consequence of his seeking to usurp undue authority; and the imposition of limitations might go on until the office of the king although maintained in name, became in fact a mere magistracy in a state wherein the real power had passed elsewhere. Of the survival of monarchy in a limited form we have an example at Sparta; of its survival as a mere magistracy, in the Archon Basileus at Athens."
II. 4. 4. 3-4.
1
2. VII. 34. 9.
3 Mbh. III, 90. 7. with commentary.
O. P. 90-16
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