The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c28.188

v1.c28.188

It would seem that the states contemplated by the Indian science of Polity are of moderate extent. With the great empires, and in particular with that of the Mauryas, comes in the institution of Viceroys, or *uparājas*⁴, for example at Ujjain and Taxila. It has been suggested that it was the Alexandrian invasion that gave the impetus to the foundation of a single sovereignty embracing the greater part of India. This is sufficiently refuted by the facts: and indeed the conception of a Universal Emperor is quite familiar in the Vedic period: we may even believe that the conception was brought into India by the Āryans, who must have known of the great Mesopotamian powers. If we must seek for any foreign influence in Maurya times, we should think rather of the Achaemenids, whose dominions extended to the Indus. As is well known (*v. sup.* p. 480), the architecture of the period, and also the style of Açoka's edicts, show definite traces of Persian influence; and the expressions 'the king's eye' and 'the king's ear,' occurring in the Arthaçāstra (pp. 175 and 328), seem to furnish literary indications pointing in the same direction.