________________
THE LICCHAVIS
327
resemblance to some of the democracies1 of the western world. It must have taken a long time to develop such institutions. But we must not imagine that the system was a creation of the Licchavis; for it seems that the samgha form of government was the normal form in ancient India even among the peoples that had a king at their head. The earliest Indian tradition of a king is that of a person elected by the people and ruling for the good of the people.2 The procedure of conducting the deliberations of an assembly must have been developing from the earliest Vedic times, as the samiti and the parisad were well-known institutions in the Ṛgveda. The Licchavis must have modelled their procedure on that which was already in vogue among the Indian Aryans, allowing a century for the evolution of the particular form of government of the Licchavis from the already existing system. Their emergence from obscurity may fairly be placed at the beginning of the seventh century B.C. It is true that we do not find the Licchavis among the Vedic peoples, but in the fourth century B.C. (the time of the Arthasästra) they are mentioned along with the Kuru-Pañcālas and the Madras, i.e. with some of the powerful races of the Brahmanic period.
3
We know nothing of the history of the Licchavis during the period of their early growth and development. The earliest political fact of any importance that we know of is that a Licchavi girl was given in marriage to Seniya or Śrenika Bimbisāra, king of Magadha. This Licchavi lady, according to the Nirayavali Sutra, one of the early Jaina works, was Cellana, the daughter of Ceṭaka, one of the Rājās of Vaiśāli, whose sister Ksatriyānī Triśalā was the mother of Mahavira. In a Tibetan Life of the Buddha, her name is given as Śrībhadra, and in some places she is named Maddā.5 She is, however, usually called Vaidehi in the Buddhist books, and her son Ajātaśatru is frequently designated 'Vedehiputto', or the son of the Videhan princess.
1 It may be argued that the Licchavi constitution was not a democracy, since citizenship was confined to the Licchavi clan, but in reply it may be pointed out that even in the great democracy of Athens, every resident was not a citizen. The Metics and the Slaves, for instance, were excluded from citizenship.
2 See, e.g., the story of Bena and Pṛthu, Mahabharata, Santiparvan, Vangavāsi Ed., Chap. 60, verse 94.
3 Jacobi, Jaina Sutras, S.B.E., Vol. XXII, Introduction, p. xiii.
4 Ibid., p. xiii, note 3.
5 Mrs. Rhys Davids and S. Sumangala Thera, The Book of the Kindred Sayings, Pt. I, p. 38, n. I.
6 Samyutta Nikaya, Pt. II, p. 268.
