The Rashtrakutas and their Times c15.s1.72

c15.s1.72

Our records supply us with very little information about the manner in which the daily business of administration was carried on at the capital. The secretariate at Malkhed must have been a big one; it must have been divided into several branches, each supervised over by its chief. S'ukra lays down that each minister was to be assisted by two secretaries,⁸¹ but in big empires like those of the Guptas, the Rāṣṭrakūṭas and the Gurjara-Pratīhāras, the actual number of secretaries must have been obviously greater. The same writer lays down that ministerial orders were to be approved by the king before they were issued;⁸² this practice, too, we may well presume was followed in our period, especially since towards the end of the Surat plates of Karkka, we find the king expressly stating that he had perused the document. Some of the Chola records show that royal orders, when drafted by the secretariat, were countersigned by the Chief Secretary; (83) in our documents, however, we come across the royal sign-manual, and the names of the composer of the grant and the person who conveyed it to the grantee. Ministers and Secretaries are conspicuous by their absence. It is, however probable that daily routine orders may have been issued by the ministers with the counter-signature of the king or the heir-apparent.