PLURALISM AND VISIBLE PATH AND EARLY INDIAN IDEA OF POLITY 5 Religion loomed large over antiquity: it seems to have loomed especially large over ancient India. Religion was called the prime symbol of Indian culture by Spengler; Toynbcc identified religion as the spirit of Indian civilization.7 From Sri Aurobindo to G.C. Pande, writers on Indian culture agree—Kosambi is an exception—that religion formed the foundation on which Indian culture stood.8 Similarly, the sacred character of the early Indian concept of state has been often emphasized.9 In fact this tradition of asserting the religious character of state goes back to a very early period. The Brahmanas asserted the notion that Kingship originated from consecration rites.93 Kumarila-Bhatta defined dharma (rajadharma, the principle of which state ought to function, was only a part of dharma, the subject matter of dharmashastra) as 'something utterly apart from mundane consideration, something desirable as producing a suprascnsible state of bliss'.10 Thus learned authorities on dharma-shastra maintained that all laws according to smritis are fundamentally religious in nature.11 Religious character of kingship in early India has recently received reinforcement in some accounts of state formation. The performance of ritual obligation by the ruler at the apex of the pyramid has been viewed as one of the important traits of segmentary states.12 Patronage given to religious establishments, integration with and participation in the ritual system were utilized by ruling dynasties to validate their newly acquired power or to buttress their waning authority.13 Legitimation of course is a complex process and the instruments through which political authority seeks validation are varied.14 Religion alone cannot explain the process. However, it can hardly be overlooked that religion occupied a major place in the politico-legal life in early India. But within this general notion of pervasiveness of religion, there had al-so been an equally strong and persistent recognition of the fact that the sphere of state authority extended into space beyond the strictly religious. In fact one even gets the feeling that there was an underlying appreciation of the fact that it was this religion-free space that provided the terra-firma for the state to stand on and exist. It is to this area that we propose to turn our eyes now. It will not be our endeavour to analyse the actual conduct of various states during different historical epochs—it would of course be a valid and fruitful exercise—but here we will confine our survey to the attitude that was dispiaycd by political thinkers to the question of 'political domain'. Ill It can be fallacious to speak of early Indian state as a unit of reference. The State obviously could not have been the same over the entire country, nor could it retain a uniformly fixed character over the long timcspread from the Vcdic to the early medieval.15 The nature of»