The Rashtrakutas and their Times c15.s1.1

c15.s1.1

All the writers on the Hindu political science hold that ministry is the most important wheel of the administrative machinery, and evidence can be adduced to show that realpolity included that institution since very early times. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa administration is no exception to the general rule. Ministers under this administration were very important and influential members of government. Nārāyaṇa, the foreign minister of Kṛṣṇa III, has been described in the Salotgi inscription³³ as another hand, as it were, ‘*Pratihastaḥ*’ of the emperor, as dear to him as his own right hand. The Pathari Pillar inscription of the feudatory Rāṣṭrakūṭa chief Parabala states that he used to regard his premier as worthy of salutations by his own head.(34) A record of king Kṛṣṇa of the Yādava dynasty compares his minister to his own tongue and right hand.(35) Another record of the same king states how his premier's feet were brightened by the crest-jewels on the head of the feudatories. It is, therefore, no wonder that the ministers sometimes possessed feudatory titles and were entitled to the Pañcamahāś'abdas. Dalla, the chief foreign minister of Dhruva, was a Sāmanta entitled to the use of the five great musical instruments.(36) Kālidāsa, the war minister or commander-in-chief of the Cālukya king Jagadekamalla, is described as entitled to the Pañcamahāśabdas in a record of his hailing from Badami.(37) Consultations with the ministry before embarking on a particular course or policy are rarely referred to in our records, probably because there was no occasion to do so. But the above evidence regarding the influence of the ministry would show that ministerial consultations are not mentioned simply because the copper-plate grants are not treatises on constitutional theory and practice. It may, however, pointed out that a record of the Yādava dynasty, which succeeded the Rāṣṭrakūṭas in the northern portions of their dominions, states while recording the grant of some shops for certain religious objects, that the king had consulted his ministers before making the grant in question.(38)