The Rashtrakutas and their Times c14.33

c14.33

Further, it can hardly be advanced that in chapters 171 and 173 of the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭalya, the word *grāma* has been used in the sense of an estate. The passage clearly refers to the devastation of ordinary villages. But there is no room for doubt as to the sense in which the term *grāma* has been used in the *Arthaśāstra*; for while describing the colonisation of new areas the book says, ‘Villages, consisting each of not less than a hundred families and not more than five hundred families of agricultural people of Sudra caste, with boundaries extending as far as a *krosha* or two, and capable of protecting each other shall be formed.’¹⁹ This passage can hardly be consistent with the view that Kauṭalya uses the word *grāma* in the sense of an estate.