Digital Rare Book:
Corporate Life In Ancient India
By Ramesh Chandra Majumdar
Published by K.L.Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta - 1918

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Author's Introduction:

Besides throwing light upon the corporate activities in public life in ancient India, the following study is also calculated to broaden our views in another respect. The account of the remarkable achievements in various spheres of life will enable us to take a true perspective view of the activities of the people in ancient India. It will establish beyond doubt that religion did not engross the whole or even an undue proportion of the public attention and that the corporate activity manifested in this connection was by no means an isolated factor, but merely one aspect of that spirit which pervaded all other spheres of action.

So far as I am aware, the subject as a whole has not been hitherto treated by any writer. Separate topics like Sangha and Gana have no doubt been dealt with by scholars, but their mutual relation, from the point of view I have indicated above, has wholly escaped them. Very little has, however, been done even with respect to these isolated subjects. A brief, though valuable, account of the ancient Scents has been given by Hopkins in his latest book, India, Old and New, but a detailed historical account of the institution has been attempted, probably for the first time, in the following pages. So far as I know, the other forms of corporate activity in economic life described in Chapter I have not been dealt with by any scholar. In regard to Chapter II, I have availed myself of incidental notices of different items of information to which full reference has been given in the footnotes. The systematic treatment of the subject, and specially the study of the village institutions in Southern India, is, however, entirely new and original. A general view of the non-monarchical States, which forms the subject matter of the third chapter, was furnished by Mr. Rhys Davids and Mr. K. P. Jayaswal and I have freely acknowledged my indebtedness to them in the footnotes. But I have attempted to furnish a historical account of the rise and development of these institutions from the earliest to the latest period.

Image: Reconstruction of ancient Indus trader at work by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer