Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c8.90

c8.90

To the second and third boards were assigned peculiar duties. The second board was charged with the task of seeing to the comfort of all travellers, merchants, ambassadors, and other foreigners visiting India². They had to attend them when sick, bury them if they died, and send their effects to their relatives in their native country. The existence of this board points to the supposition that a large number of merchants, chiefly, no doubt, Greeks from Syria and Alexandria, visited India in this reign, attracted by Chandragupta’s far-sighted foreign policy. The last board of officials managed the census reports, and registered births and deaths. By this means taxation was facilitated, and the practice of infanticide, common among certain classes of Hindus, was checked. The penalties imposed for various offences were terribly severe. We can only suppose that owing to the high level of morality prevailing in India, they were seldom inflicted. No doubt, however, Chandragupta’s severity accounts very largely for his unpopularity. Maiming—a Persian form of punishment—was imposed for perjury. The death-penalty was, as we have seen, exacted for the comparatively trifling offence of defrauding the revenue, and also for disabling a craftsman. Even Aśoka retained the death-penalty, but he gave the criminal three days' respite for religious exercises. Apparently, in Chandragupta's time, sentence was carried into execution as soon as passed. In the days of Fa-Hian, capital punishment had been removed from the statute-book.