Maurya and Shunga Art c11.4

c11.4

It has been contended that the dismemberment of the Maurya empire was brought about by a reaction promoted by the Brāhmaṇas, and the assasination of the last Maurya monarch by Puṣyamitra Śuṅga was but the successful culmination of a revolution fostered and engineered by the Brāhmaṇas.⁶⁸ Equally forcefully has it been argued that the ascription of the dismemberment of the Maurya empire to a hypothetical Brahmanical revolution is without any objective basis in facts.⁶⁹ This is not the place to go into the details of the contention and counter-contention, but I wonder if the main point in the controversy has not often been missed. I have already hinted at the fact that Maurya administration was a highly centralised and bureaucratic one and with its emphasis on a highly efficient espionage system, its monopolistic economic policy and its authoritarian social and religious ideology, it easily lent itself to the despotic will of the monarch on the throne and no less to the coercive and oppressive interference of wicked official agents. The humanism and benevolence of Aśoka were hardly any guarantee against the evils such a centralised and authoritarian government tended to foster. There can be no doubt that the government and its administration weighed heavily on the subjects and they resented it. The ‘Divyāvadāna’ expressly refers to two open rebellions at Taxila, once during the reign of Bindusāra, and again in the reign of Aśoka, and on both occasions the immediate cause alleged was the tyranny of the wicked ministers.⁷⁰ The evidence of Asokan epigraphs seems to suggest that official mal-administration was widely prevalent and it is not unlikely that there were rebellions at Ujjain and Kalinga as well.⁷¹