ABSTRACT
No system of diverse states and peoples developed a greater sophistication in ancient
times than that of India. Largely isolated between the Himalayas and the sea, the Indian
states constituted a world of their own. The great subcontinent was, and still is, inhabited
by an enormous diversity of peoples speaking a great variety of languages. When the
Aryans gradually flooded over the near east and Europe, they also crossed the Himalayas,
and in the course of time imposed on all but the southern peninsula of India an Aryan
dominion and a common Aryan language, Sanskrit. Aryan religion and ways of life
blended into earlier Indian ones to form Hindu civilization. Hinduism in its many variants
is one of the major civilizations of mankind, a complex culture affecting every aspect of
religious, social and economic life and thought. We can examine only the nature of its
political states system.
