political thought

[witzel at HUSC3.HARVARD.EDU]

One early, perhaps not the earliest, response comes from neighboring Nepal 
-- always conscious of te fact that it is a "pumkin between two 
stones, the Company (now India) and China"  (King Prthvi Narayan Shah) 

This is the (unpublished?) Gorandaakhyo Malimlucah "The Bandits called
Goranda" (British) probably written in 1821 after the Anglo-Nepali war of 
1814-16.

This Nepali text criticizes the merchant people (Goranda, cf. Murunda)
from overseas for their treachery and the danger they pose to Hindu states
such as Nepal which Prthi Narayan called the "true Hindu country/
Hindust(h)an (yo asil hindusthaan ho). (Note also the 19th c. Nepali
diplomatic correspondece, in Sanskrit, with the states of Rajasthan). 

The estimation of the (19th c. enlarged) Bhavisya Purana is not very 
different: the merchant people from overseas, reigned by the queen 
Vaktavati.

(janapada is as old as the late Vedic texts, and prajaa is found in 
Dharma texts (Manu, also Kautilya) and medieval texts dealing with the king 
and his subjects; exact passage can be excerpted easily).


Michael Witzel
Sanskrit Department
Harvard University 
witzel at husc3.harvard.edu






On Wed, 12 Jun 1996 PMEHTA at hdc.harvard.edu wrote:

> 
> Could someone provide refernces on the following topics?
> 
> Is there any work on Indian conceptions of "sovereginty" in the 
> eigteenth century (something like Ronald Inden's work on the 
> rashtrakutas)?  What would be some of the original sources one 
> can consult on this matter?
> 
> When does one find the earliest  Indian political critiques of 
> the British Empire.  What are the significant ones before 
> 1850's?
> 
> What are good sources on the historical transformation of two 
> concepts:  praja (Gandhi uses it frequently in the Gujarati 
> edition of Hind Swaraj) and janapada.
> 
> many thanks
> 
> pratap mehta
> department of government 
> harvard university
> pmehta at hdc.harvard.edu
> 
>