Historians, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists have addressed the concepts of power and authority from their respective viewpoints across the decades. It was the British who initiated a historical search for political power in ancient India and found the presence of despotic rulers along with a state that was static in nature. This nineteenth-century Imperialist view was countered by the Nationalist School (especially from the beginning of the twentieth century) who upheld the democratic credentials of the ancient Indian rulers vis-a-vis the state. It is to be noted that these two schools of historians mainly dealt with the dynastic histories of the past. A new tradition of interpreting the early Indian state was started by the Marxist historians who sought to explain the nature of political authority in relation to material culture, society, and the economy. While they had found a strong power centre during the Mauryas, a departure from that was located from the time of the Guptas. The 1970s saw the rise of another group of historians, a collective termed by Hermann Kulke as 'non-aligned historians', who not only questioned the existing three traditions but also offered multiple perspectives on this matter. The present essay, therefore, will address the historiographical development of the study on power and authority in ancient India and identify its major shifts and markers since the last two centuries.