The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.145

v1.c17.145

the Grāmaṇī, ‘village headman,’ the Kshattṛi, ‘chamberlain,’ the Saṃgrahītṛi, ‘charioteer’ or ‘treasurer,’ the Bhāgadugha, ‘collector of taxes’ or ‘divider of food,’ and the Akshāvāpa, ‘superintendent of dicing’ or ‘thrower of dice.’ The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa has also the ‘huntsman’ and the ‘courier,’ while the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā adds the Takshan, ‘carpenter,’ and Rathakāra, ‘chariot-maker.’ In an older list of eight Vīras, ‘heroes,’ given in the Pañchaviṃça Brāhmaṇa are found the brother, son, Purohita, Mahishī, Sūta, Grāmaṇī, Kshattṛi, and Saṃgrahītṛi. We are faced, in the interpretation of the names of several of these officers, with the doubt whether we are to recognise in them merely courtiers or public functionaries. The Sūta is according to native tradition the ‘charioteer’; but it seems much more probable that he was at once a herald and a minstrel, and to this conclusion the inviolability, which in one passage is attributed to him, clearly points. The Grāmaṇī has already been met with as a military official in the period of the Rigveda. Probably at this epoch a Grāmaṇī was, both for civil and military purposes, at the head of each village, owing, it may be conjectured, his position to the king, while the Grāmaṇī *par excellence* presided over the city or village where the royal court was situated. It is also far from unlikely, despite the silence of the texts, that the civil functions of the Grāmaṇī were the more important; for the post is emphatically declared in several places to represent the summit of the ambition of the Vaiçya. If later analogy is to help us, we may conjecture that the Grāmaṇī formed the channel through which the royal control was exercised and the royal dues received. It may well be then that the household officers, besides their more primitive functions, carried out the important duties of receiving and disbursing the revenues which the king thus obtained; and on them must have fallen the duty of seeing that the supplies, which the Vaiçyas were required to provide for the maintenance of the king’s household, were duly forthcoming. The condition of these officers is indeed probably to be compared with that of the household of the early English and Norman kings.