The Rashtrakutas and their Times c15.s1.35

c15.s1.35

The designation of the Foreign Minister, who has been invariably called a *dūta* in the works on politics like the Arthaśāstra, Rājadharmaparvan and Manusmṛti (chapter VII) etc., seems to have undergone a change by this time throughout India. Most of the epigraphical records use the more pompous and expressive title of *Mahāsandhivigrahaka* to denote the person who held that responsible office in the ministry. This minister figures several times in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa record, and we see him usually entrusted with the drafting of the copper plate charters creating alienated holdings. One expects the Revenue Minister to draft such charters, but the work was usually entrusted to the secretariate of the foreign minister, probably because the charters had to describe the genealogy and the exploits of the grantor and his family and the foreign office had the most reliable and up-to-date information on the point. It would be interesting to note that there is an agreement in this respect between the epigraphical practice and the dicta of the contemporary Smṛitis on the point. An anonymous text quoted in the *Mitākṣarā* on Yājñavalkya I 319-20 states:—