The _Mahabharata_, the great Hindu epic, makes mention of kingless states or oligarchies. "In fact," says Mr. Banerjea, "all the Indian nations of these times possessed popular institutions of some type or other."[5] Professor Rhys Davids has said, in his _Buddhist India_, that "the earliest Buddhist records reveal the survival side by side with more or less powerful monarchies, of republics with either complete or modified independence." He names ten such republics in Northern India alone. In regard to the system of Government effective within one of the tribes that constituted a republic of their own, the same scholar observes: "The administrative and judicial business of the clan was carried out in public assembly, at which young and old were alike present in their common Mote Hall. A single chief--how and for what period chosen we do not know--was elected an officeholder, presiding over the sessions, or, if there were no sessions, over the State. He bore the title of _Raja_, which must have meant something like the Roman Consul or the Greek Archon."[6] There is no evidence of the existence of slaves or serfs in these communities. Evidently all were freemen. (2) We have the evidence of Greek historians of the period who accompanied Alexander in his Asiatic Campaign, or who, after Alexander's death, represented Greek monarchs at the courts of Indian rulers. "Even as late as the date of Alexander's invasion," says Mr. Banerjea, "many of the nations of the Punjab lived under democratic institutions." Speaking of one of them called Ambasthas (Sambastai), the Greek author of _Ancient India_ says: "They lived in cities in which the democratic form of Government prevailed." "Curtius," adds Mr. Banerjea, "mentions a powerful Indian tribe, where the form of Government was democratic, and not regal."[7] Similarly Arrian, another Greek writer, is quoted as mentioning several other independent, self-governing tribal communities who lived under democratic forms of government and bravely resisted the advance of Alexander. One of them, when making submission to Alexander, told him that "they were attached more than any others to freedom and autonomy, and that their freedom they had preserved intact from the time Dionysos came to India until Alexander's invasion."[8] There were some others which had an aristocratic form of Government. In one of them mentioned in _Ancient India_, "the administration was in the hands of three hundred wise men." Another Greek writer, Diodoros, speaks of _Patala_ as "a City of great note with a political constitution drawn on the same lines as the Spartan." It may safely be presumed that the Greek meant what he said. Chanakya, the author of a great treatise on political science, mentions many powerful oligarchies that existed down to the fourth century A. D. In one of the inscriptions, said to be of the sixth century A. D., the _Malavas_ are referred to as living under a republican form of Government.[9]