The Colas c25.28

c25.28

In this respect the Cōḷa government did not differ perceptibly from its contemporaries. What distinguished it from them was the superior executive strength it was able to develop by bringing into existence a highly organised and thoroughly efficient bureaucracy. It saw to it, moreover, that the growing host of officials by no means interfered with the free life and the initiative of local authorities and associations, while at the same time they controlled them efficiently and kept them on the straight path by a periodical scrutiny of their affairs. The more one reads the contemporary records, the more one begins to admire the nice balance struck between centralised control and local initiative, the clear distinction, ever present, between the functions of the state and those of the social group. The individual, as such, did not count. The problem of ‘the man versus the state’ never arose in a society that is best described as a federation of groups.